Validation of coronavirus-2019 phobia scale using preschool practitioners in urban and rural communities in Nigeria

Abstract

Coronavirus-2019 (COVID-19) emerged in December 2019, causing significant changes in people's social lives and other human activities. The outbreak halted educational activities throughout the world. The Nigerian experience was unique in that most people were skeptical about the pandemic's existence. This practice contributed to the Nigerian people's fear of the COVID-19 outbreak. However, in Nigeria, there has never been a validated or established Covid-19 phobia scale, necessitating this study. This study was a pure validation study on COVID-19 phobia scale (C19PS). The study area was south-east states and a sample of 386 preschool practitioners in urban and rural communities of South East States, Nigeria participated in the study. The eligibility criteria include being a preschool teacher and demonstrating signs of COVID-19 phobia. The validation of the C19PS was done by subjecting the data gathered to principal axis factoring analysis with varimax rotation. The model fit for the data was tested using root mean square error of approximation and comparative fit index. It was found that the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin value of .845 for the measure of the adequacy of the sample size. There was also a significant Bartlett's test of sphericity ( P < .05). This implies that the correlation matrix for the C19PS is not an identity matrix. It was revealed that C19PS had good overall reliability (α = .896) and model fit (Root mean square error of approximation = .042, comparative fit index = .943) in a sample of Nigerian preschool practitioners. As a result, C19PS was recommended as a trustworthy tool for identifying persons who suffer from COVID-19 phobia.

Psychometric properties of the Persian version of the COVID-19 Phobia Scale (C19P-S)

“…These outcomes were comparable to the initial C19P-S. This study, therefore, demonstrated that COVID-19 can cause phobia in the population as psychological, psychosomatic, economic, and social [9,13,[40][41][42][43][44][45].…”

“…The results of this study showed that the items in the final model of the C19P-S had convergent validity [ 44 , 45 ]. According to Hair et al, convergent validity exists when construct items are closely related and have high variance [ 46 ].…”

“…The present study examined internal consistency (through Cronbach's alphas and Omega coefficients) and test–retest reliability to demonstrate that the Persian-C19P-S had good stability (via ICC coefficients). For the C19P-S and all of its subscales, all Cronbach's alpha and Omega coefficients were higher than 0.70, demonstrating good reliability and similar to reported results of the original scale (0.95) [ 13 ], Korean (0.93) [ 41 ], Portuguese (0.92) [ 42 ], Turkish (0.92) [ 49 ], Indonesian (0.90) [ 43 ], Arabic (0.92) [ 40 ], United States (0.71–0.79) [ 9 ], European countries (0.93) [ 11 ], Nigeria (0.89) [ 44 ], and Japanese (90) [ 45 ]. Also, test–retest reliability coefficients calculated by ICC coefficients were higher than 0.70 for the scale and its subscales, confirming the good stability of the scale.…”

“…The results of this study showed that the items in the final model of the C19P-S had convergent validity [44,45]. [46].…”