The string you posted is correct. Also, there's no way to express the same condition using arrays or hashes.
Array–syntax and Hash-syntax are useful when you need to interpolate values. For instance, the following condition
named_scope :is_one, :conditions => "field = '1'"
can be written as
named_scope :is_one, :conditions => ["field = ?", "1"]
or
named_scope :is_one, :conditions => { :field => "1" }
The Hash-syntax is a subset of the Array-syntax and supports only a limited set of operators.
For instance, you can transform
named_scope :is_one, :conditions => ["field1 = ? AND field2 IN (?)", "1", ["foo", "bar"]]
into
named_scope :is_one, :conditions => { :field1 => "1", :field2 => ["foo", "bar"] }
but there's no Hash-equivalent for
# OR
named_scope :is_one, :conditions => ["field1 = ? OR field2 IN (?)", "1", ["foo", "bar"]]
# <>
named_scope :is_one, :conditions => ["field1 <> ?", "1"]