COVID-19 Impact Battery: Development and Validation

Abstract

In addition to impacting the physical health of millions of Americans, the novel-coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic is a significant psychological stressor due to both the threat of the illness itself and the mitigation strategies used to contain the spread. To facilitate understanding of the impact of COVID-19, validated measures are needed. Using a stepwise procedure in line with best-practice measurement procedures, the current report summarizes the procedures employed to create the COVID-19 Impact Battery (CIB). Two independent samples recruited via Amazon Mechanical Turk (N = 175, N = 642) and a third community sample (N = 259) were used for reliability and validity testing. Validation procedures yielded a battery consisting of three scales assessing COVID-19 related behaviors, worry, and disability. The behaviors scale contains three subscales assessing stockpiling, cleaning, and avoidance. The worry subscale also contains three subscales assessing health, financial and catastrophic concerns. In addition, we created a short version of the battery (CIB-S) to allow for more flexibility in data collection. In summary, we have provided reliability and validity information for the CIB and CIB-S, demonstrating that these measures can facilitate evaluation of the broad impact of COVID-19 on mental health functioning.

Vulnerability to COVID‐19–Related Disability: The Impact of Posttraumatic Stress Symptoms on Psychosocial Impairment During the Pandemic

“…Despite the strengths of the current study, including its longitudinal design and use of an empirically validated COVID-19related disability scale (i.e., the CIB disability scale; Schmidt et al, 2020), the present findings must be considered in the context of several limitations. Although the use of online crowdsourcing mechanisms, including Amazon's MTurk platform, is well-accepted, and attention check items were utilized to prevent the inclusion of automated responses, the findings from this sample should be interpreted with caution, as they may not be representative of the entire U.S. population.…”

“…Items were used to specifically assess the impact of COVID-19 on household activities, day-to-day work, community activities, emotional health, concentration, getting along with new people, and maintaining friendships. The initial development and validation of the CIB disability scale evidenced strong reliability and validity, with Cronbach's alpha values for internal consistency ranging from .82 to .87; longitudinal measurement invariance showed a good fit; and the scale score related as expected to factors, such as negative affect (Schmidt et al, 2020). In the current study, the CIB Disability subscale demonstrated good internal consistency at both Wave 1, Cronbach's α = .84, and Wave 2, Cronbach's α = .83.…”

“…The COVID-19 Impact Battery (CIB; Schmidt et al, 2020) is a 57-item, self-report measure that contains three subscales: Behaviors, Worry, and Disability. The current study utilized the CIB Disability Scale (see Supplementary Materials).…”

Interoceptive anxiety-related processes: Importance for understanding COVID-19 and future pandemic mental health and addictive behaviors and their comorbidity

“…Historically, there have been several constructs that are characterized by interoceptive fear or anxiety, most notably anxiety in anticipation of pain-related experiences (e.g., fear during the experience of pain; Rogers, Gallagher, et al, 2020 ), heart-focused anxiety ( Mayorga, Shepherd, Garey, Viana, & Zvolensky, 2021 ), fear of pain ( Vlaeyen, De Jong, Onghena, Kerckhoffs-Hanssen, & Kole-Snijders, 2002 ), anxiety sensitivity (fear about the negative consequences of anxiety sensations; Taylor et al, 2007 ), suffocation fear (fears about breathing dysregulation; McNally & Eke, 1996 ), and health anxiety (anxiety focused on health status or symptoms; Blakey & Abramowitz, 2017 ). There also is emerging research on theoretically relevant interoceptive anxiety, worry, and fear constructs that are specific to the COVID-19 virus (or future pandemics; Schmidt, Allan, et al, 2021 ). This growing anxiety-related COVID-19 literature has the potential to represent narrower pandemic-specific interoceptive anxiety-related constructs.…”

“…Although the impact of COVID-19 has been and continues to be devastating from a public health perspective, it sits on the backdrop of a large history of viral diseases, including Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, and Ebola ( Ashour, Elkhatib, Rahman, & Elshabrawy, 2020 ; Feldmann, Jones, Klenk, & Schnittler, 2003 ; NovelSwine-Origin Influenza A (H1N1) Virus Investigation Team et al (2009) , among others. Although the impact of COVID-19 on physical health is substantial ( Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2021a ), the pandemic is also characterized by widespread acute and chronic stress across personal, educational, occupational, and interpersonal realms of functioning ( Schmidt, Allan, et al, 2021 ; Xie et al, 2020 ).…”