The fear of COVID-19 scale: Its structure and measurement invariance across 48 countries.

Artur Józef Sawicki, Magdalena Anna Żemojtel-Piotrowska, Julia Maria Balcerowska, Monika J. Sawicka, Jarosław P. Piotrowski, Constantine Sedikides, Peter Karl Jonason, John Maltby, Mladen Adamovic, Attisso Mathieu Désiré Agada

45 more authors

Oli Ahmed, Laith Al-Shawaf, Seth Christopher Yaw Appiah, Rahkman Ardi, Zana Hasan Babakr, Sergiu Bălţătescu, Mario Bonato, Richard Gregory Cowden, Phatthanakit Chobthamkit, Laura De Pretto, Valdiney Velôso Gouveia, Carmen Haretche, Dzintra Iliško, John Jamir Benzon R. Aruta, Fanli Jia, Veljko Jovanović, Tomislav Jukić, Shanmukh Vasant Kamble, Narine Khachatryan, Martina Klicperová‐Baker, Metodi Koralov, Mónika Erika Kovács, Mabelle Kretchner, Aitor Larzabal Fernández, Kadi Liik, Najma Iqbal Malik, Karine Malysheva, Chanki Moon, Stephan Muehlbacher, Нартова-Бочавер Софья Кимовна, Jorge Torres‐Marín, Emrah Özsoy, Joonha Park, Elena Piccinelli, Jano Ramos‐Diaz, Ognjen Riđić, Adil Samekin, Andrej Starc, Tra Thi Thanh Kieu, Robert Tomšík, Charles S. Umeh, Eduardo Wills Herrera, Anna Włodarczyk, Zahir Vally, Somayeh Zand

2022

Full text Open access: Green Metadata (CSL-JSON)
DOI 10.1037/pas0001102
Data confidence 85 high
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Abstract

Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has been a source of fear around the world. We asked whether the measurement of this fear is trustworthy and comparable across countries. In particular, we explored the measurement invariance and cross-cultural replicability of the widely used Fear of COVID-19 scale (FCV-19S), testing community samples from 48 countries (N = 14,558). The findings indicate that the FCV-19S has a somewhat problematic structure, yet the one-factor solution is replicable across cultural contexts and could be used in studies that compare people who vary on gender and educational level. The validity of the scale is supported by a consistent pattern of positive correlations with perceived stress and general anxiety. However, given the unclear structure of the FCV-19S, we recommend using latent factor scores, instead of raw scores, especially in cross-cultural comparisons. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).