Original title: The Fear of COVID-19 Scale: Development and Initial Validation
The researchers made a seven-question scale to measure fear of COVID-19. They built the questions from earlier fear scales, expert reviews, and interviews with participants. They tested the scale with 717 people in Iran, checking whether its questions worked together and whether its scores related to anxiety, depression, and perceived vulnerability to disease. The results supported the scale’s reliability and validity in this group.
Imagine packing a small bag for a trip and trying to judge how worried you are about forgetting something. A single item may not tell the whole story, and some choices may not fit the worry you mean to measure. In this paper, the seven questions are the items in the bag, and testing them checks whether they work together to show fear of COVID-19.
People supporting public health or mental health efforts need ways to assess COVID-19 fear, not just assume how worried someone feels. This scale offers a brief measure, though the study tested it with Iranian participants.
The abstract reports testing with 717 Iranian participants and does not establish how well the scale works in other populations or settings. It describes initial validation; it does not report evidence about clinical outcomes or whether using the scale reduces fear.
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The Fear of COVID-19 Scale: Development and Initial Validation — Daniel Kwasi Ahorsu, Chung‐Ying Lin, Vida Imani et al. — International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction — doi:10.1007/s11469-020-00270-8
Abstract licence: CC BY
Explanation generated by Synthesis from the abstract — it is not the original paper.