International survey for assessing COVID-19’s impact on fear and health: study protocol

Lok, Kris Yuet Wan; Fong, Daniel Yee Tak; Wong, Janet Yuen Ha; Ho, Mandy; Choi, E. Kwan; Pandian, Vinciya; Davidson, Patricia M.; Duan, Wenjie; Tarrant, Marie; Lee, Jung Jae

doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2021-048720

Cited by 16 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…An international study was conducted, which aimed to examine the global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on lifestyle behaviors, fear, depression, and perceived needs of communities [ 26 , 27 ]. The study was conducted in 30 countries across the globe.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Psychometric Evaluation of a Fear of COVID-19 Scale in China: Cross-sectional Study

Choi¹,

Duan²,

Fong³

et al. 2022

JMIR Form Res

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Background At the very beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, information about fear of COVID-19 was very limited in Chinese populations, and there was no standardized and validated scale to measure the fear associated with the pandemic. Objective This cross-sectional study aimed to adapt and validate a fear scale to determine the levels of fear of COVID-19 among the general population in mainland China and Hong Kong. Methods A web-based questionnaire platform was developed for data collection; the study instruments were an adapted version of the 8-item Breast Cancer Fear Scale (“Fear Scale”) and the 4-item Patient Health Questionnaire. The internal construct validity, convergent validity, known group validity, and reliability of the adapted Fear Scale were assessed, and descriptive statistics were used to summarize the participants’ fear levels. Results A total of 2822 study participants aged 18 years or older were included in the analysis. The reliability of the adapted scale was satisfactory, with a Cronbach α coefficient of .93. The item-total correlations corrected for overlap were >0.4, confirming their internal construct validity. Regarding convergent validity, a small-to-moderate correlation between the Fear Scale and the 4-item Patient Health Questionnaire scores was found. Regarding known group validity, we found that the study participants who were recruited from Hong Kong had a higher level of fear than the study participants from mainland China. Older adults had a higher level of fear compared with younger adults. Furthermore, having hypertension, liver disease, heart disease, cancer, anxiety, and insomnia were associated with a higher fear level. The descriptive analysis found that more than 40% of the study participants reported that the thought of COVID-19 scared them. About one-third of the study participants reported that when they thought about COVID-19, they felt nervous, uneasy, and depressed. Conclusions The psychometric properties of the adapted Fear Scale are acceptable to measure the fear of COVID-19 among Chinese people. Our study stresses the need for more psychosocial support and care to help this population cope with their fears during the pandemic.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The study protocol has been published elsewhere [ 26 ]. The study was approved by the institutional review board of the University of Hong Kong/Hospital Authority Hong Kong West Cluster (reference UW 20-272).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Psychometric Evaluation of a Fear of COVID-19 Scale in China: Cross-sectional Study

Choi¹,

Duan²,

Fong³

et al. 2022

JMIR Form Res

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“…This study was part of the international CARE project, which aimed to identify the causes of fear, fear levels, anxiety, and depression in participants recruited from over 30 countries (Lok et al., 2021). Data collection was done through a cross‐sectional self‐administered questionnaire between August and December 2020.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This study was part of an extensive international survey aimed to evaluate the effect of the COVID‐19 pandemic on health, fear, and depression. The more comprehensive study was explained elsewhere (Lok et al., 2021) and briefed here.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A multi‐centric study on validation of the Fear Scale for COVID‐19 in five Arabic speaking countries

et al. 2021

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“…The first phase focused on the translation of the BCFS, and the face and content validity were assessed. The second phase emphasised the BCFS validation through a psychometric testing process including internal consistency, reliability, convergent validity, known-group validity and item response theory(IRT)-based analysis, using the Korean dataset in the large scale of international survey [26].…”

Section: Study Design and Proceduresmentioning

confidence: 99%

Psychometric evaluation of Korean version of COVID-19 fear scale (K-FS-8): A population based cross-sectional study

Lee

Choi

et al. 2023

PLoS ONE

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COVID-19-related fear negatively affects the public’s psychological well-being and health behaviours. Although psychological distress including depression and anxiety under COVID-19 is well-established in literature, research scarcely evaluated the fear of COVID-19 with a large sample using validated scale. This study aimed to validate a Korean version of fear scale(K-FS-8) using an existing fear scale(Breast Cancer Fear Scale; 8 items) and to measure the fear of COVID-19 in South Korea. A cross-sectional online survey was conducted with 2235 Korean adults from August to September 2020. The Breast Cancer Fear Scale was translated from English into Korean using forward-backward translation, and then face validity was assessed. Patient Health Questionnaire-4 and Primary Care Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Screen for DSM-5 were used for assessing convergent validity of K-FS-8, and item response theory analysis was also conducted to further validate the K-FS-8. This study confirmed the validity and reliability of the K-FS-8. The validity of the scale was confirmed by convergent validity, known-group validity and item response theory analysis, and internal consistency was also examined(Cronbach’s α coefficient = 0.92). This study also identified that 84.6% participants had high COVID-19 fear; whilst 26.3%, 23.2% and 13.4% participants had high risk of post-traumatic stress disorder, depressive and anxiety symptoms, respectively. The K-FS-8 showed the acceptability measuring the fear of COVID-19 in the Korean population. The K-FS-8 can be applied to screen for fear of COVID-19 and related major public health crises identifying individuals with high levels of fear in primary care settings who will benefit from psychological support.

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International survey for assessing COVID-19’s impact on fear and health: study protocol

Cited by 16 publications

References 32 publications

Psychometric Evaluation of a Fear of COVID-19 Scale in China: Cross-sectional Study

Psychometric Evaluation of a Fear of COVID-19 Scale in China: Cross-sectional Study

A multi‐centric study on validation of the Fear Scale for COVID‐19 in five Arabic speaking countries

Psychometric evaluation of Korean version of COVID-19 fear scale (K-FS-8): A population based cross-sectional study

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