Fear of COVID-19 scale: Psychometric characteristics, reliability and validity in the Israeli population

Abstract

Mental health clinicians worldwide have been expressing concerns regarding the broad psychological effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Nonetheless, only a few studies have thus far evaluated the degree of fear of COVID-19, partially due to the lack of validated measures. In this study we evaluated the psychometric properties of the Hebrew version of the Fear of COVID-19 scale (FCV-19S), recently developed to assess different aspects of the fear of the pandemic, in a normative population of participants in Israel. Participants (n = 639) were asked to complete the FCV-19S scale, as well as to report anxiety, depression, and stress levels using validated scales. The results a unidimensional factor structure of the FCV-19S which explained 53.71% of the variance. When forcing a two-factor structure model, the analysis revealed two factors pertaining to emotional fear reactions and symptomatic expressions of fear. Gender, sociodemographic status, chronic illness, being in an at-risk group, and having a family member dying of COVID-19 were positively associated with fear of COVID-19. The measure was associated with anxiety, stress and depression. These results suggest that the FCV-19S has good psychometric properties, and can be utilized in studies assessing the effects of the pandemic on the population's mental health.

Tamil version of the Fear of COVID-19 Scale

“…Our study replicated common reports that the FCV-19S provides a unidimensional assessment of fear of COVID-19 (Ahorsu et al, 2020;Alyami et al 2020;Perz et al 2020;Sakib et al 2020;Satici et al 2020;Soraci et al 2020;Tsipropoulou et al 2020). The only exception is a study reporting on results from a Hebrew version (Bitan et al 2020) where the authors proposed that items 1, 2, 4, and 5 (generally afraid, uncomfortable thinking about COVID-19, afraid of losing life, anxious from news) form a factor called emotional fear reactions and that item 3, 6, and 7 (clammy hands, lack of sleep, heart racing) be grouped into a factor called symptomatic expressions of fear. Pakpour et al (2020) argued that the statistical approach used by Bitan et al (2020) was inappropriate and that a con rmatory factor analysis should have been used instead of a principal components analysis where a two-factor was forced even though a single-factor solution had already indicated that a t was adequate.…”

“…None of the items were mis tting and were well within the acceptable range of -2.50 to 2.50. Due to a previous report of a two-factor structure of the scale (Bitan et al 2020), the results were inspected for any indications of multidimensionality in the present dataset. The residual correlation coe cients for items 3, 6, and 7…”

“…Overall Cronbach's alpha was 0.93, and Cronbach's alpha values when item deleted were either .91 or .92. (Winter et al 2020) and one of the studies reporting data from a Hebrew version (Bitan et al 2020) was related to low means and possible oor effects for items 3, 6, and 7. The pattern of item means of the Tamil version appeared to be most similar to that of the Bangla version (Sakib et al 2020) and also similar to that found for the English-language version used in a sample in India (Doshi et al 2020).…”

“…The only exception is a study reporting on results from a Hebrew version (Bitan et al 2020) where the authors proposed that items 1, 2, 4, and 5 (generally afraid, uncomfortable thinking about COVID-19, afraid of losing life, anxious from news) form a factor called emotional fear reactions and that item 3, 6, and 7 (clammy hands, lack of sleep, heart racing) be grouped into a factor called symptomatic expressions of fear. Pakpour et al (2020) argued that the statistical approach used by Bitan et al (2020) was inappropriate and that a con rmatory factor analysis should have been used instead of a principal components analysis where a two-factor was forced even though a single-factor solution had already indicated that a t was adequate. In their validation of the Arabic version of the FCV-19S, Alyami et al (2020) noted error co-variance for items 3, 6, and 7, although this could be resolved by correlating the error co-variance in a con rmatory factor analysis.…”

Physical Distancing and Hand Washing During the COVID-19 Pandemic: The role of fear, perceived seriousness, and health knowledge

“…However, as fear of uncertainty and negative consequences is also known to be a key variable in effective health communication (Finset et al 2020), Ahorsu et al (2020) recently developed the Fear of . This scale has already been translated from its original Persian version to other languages such as Arabic (Alyami et al 2020), Bangla (Sakib et al 2020), English (Harper et al 2020), Hebrew (Bitan et al 2020), and Turkish (Satici et al 2020), but studies are now needed to explore the function of fear of COVID-19 in relation to pandemic-related health behaviors. Studies using samples from New Zealand and the UK have reported that fear of COVID-19 could be a motivator for engaging in relevant health behaviors and adhering to lockdown rules (Harper et al 2020;Winter et al 2020).…”