The Fear of War Scale (FOWARS): development and initial validation

Abstract

The emergence of the Ukraine-Russia war led to fear, worry and anxiety among individuals, mostly in the immediate neighbor countries of Ukraine. The purpose of the present study was to develop the Fear of War Scale (FOWARS), aiming to fill the gap in the literature that currently is scarce in valid assessment tools for measuring the fear of war. The sample of the study consisted of 722 Hungarian speaking participants, mainly from Romania and Hungary. Exploratory factor analysis evinced a two-factor model of the newly developed scale, and the final version fulfilled the criteria of the confirmatory factor analysis. The 13-items FOWARS has robust psychometric properties and proves to be appropriate for fear of war assessment in the general population. The phenomenon is measured on two factors, namely experiential and physiological dimensions of fear. The scale is available in the present paper in three languages: English, Hungarian and Romanian.

War-related stress scale

“…As with COVID-related stressors (Taylor et al, 2020), fear of an economic crisis was also found to play an important role. All in all, the items included in both the short and full version of the scale are consistent with previous findings and recommendations on what people perceive as important in times of war (Choudhary et al, 2022;Mbah & Wasum, 2022;Kalcza-Janosi et al, 2022).…”

“…Firstly, people's sense of safety is disrupted worldwide. People living in surrounding countries, as well as further afield, can fear conflict escalation or nuclear war (Kalcza-Janosi et al, 2022), especially when the threat is definable and proximate (Boehnke & Schwartz, 1997). The associated crisis can also have a global economic impact that involves higher inflation, supply chain disruptions, stock swings, reductions in investment and economic uncertainty (Mbah & Wasum, 2022).…”

“…However, studies usually trace emotional reactions and the impact of war on people's mental health retrospectively (Lapid Pickam et al, 2021). Furthermore, there is a dearth of measures that specifically focus on war-related stressors (Kalcza-Janosi et al, 2022). The present study thus aims to develop and validate a measure covering a wide spectrum of areas that are affected by war or an armed conflict and their (potential) consequences.…”

Political Party Affinity and Fear of Conventional and Nuclear War in Germany

“…Given Germany's history of war (particularly World War II), German individuals in particular may develop a fear of war. Because fear of war is associated with adverse mental health outcomes [2][3][4][5], knowledge about the correlates of fear of war is certainly relevant.…”

“…Former studies were mainly performed 30 to 40 years ago (e.g., [2,5,6]) and demonstrated a higher fear of war among women compared to men [6]. However, some recent studies also exist (e.g., [3,[7][8][9]).…”