Evaluation of the English Version of the Fear of COVID-19 Scale and Its Relationship with Behavior Change and Political Beliefs

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has many individuals around the world fearing for their lives. The constant news coverage, rapid transmission, and relatively high mortality rate, make fearfulness a natural response. To assess the fear of COVID-19, the Fear of COVID-19 Scale (FCV-19S) was developed. The primary aim of the present study was to conduct the first psychometric assessment and validation of the English version of the FCV-19S. Two samples were collected in New Zealand. Sample 1 comprised 1624 participants of which 1397 completed all questions and were used in the analyses. Sample 2 comprised 1111 participants of which 1023 completed all questions and were used in the analyses. Several psychometric tests were conducted to ascertain the scale's reliability and validity. Across both samples, the FCV-19S had high internal consistency. Consistent with the earlier validation studies, the FCV-19S displayed a moderately strong relationship with the perceived infectability and germ aversion subscales of the perceived vulnerability to disease scale (PVDS). Furthermore, FCV-19S scores were negatively correlated with the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale (WEMWBS) scores. With respect to the motivating role of fear, there was a significant

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

“…Unlike Harper et al (2020), who reported a weak to moderate (β=.20) effect of fear of COVID-19 on pandemic-related health behavior change, our study found no associations between fear of COVID-19 and physical distancing and hand washing. Our result is also in contrast with another study where the authors reported weak correlations (rho=.20 and rho=.11) between fear of COVID-19 and adherence to 2-m physical distancing in two samples collected in New Zealand (Winter et al 2020).…”

“…Given the known effectiveness of fear as a motivator for behavior change (Tannenbaum et al 2015) and the above-mentioned reports of associations between fear of COVID-19 and relevant health behaviors, our results may appear unexpected. However, it needs to be noted that the associations reported in the UK (Harper et al 2020) and New Zealand (Winter et al 2020) should still be considered relatively small, and the discrepancies between these reports and our ndings from Saudi Arabia must therefore not be exaggerated. Lack of predictive effects may well be related to the fact that frequency of physical distancing and hand washing was overall high in the present sample, resulting in a ceiling effect.…”

“…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). The present study extends exploration of the role of fear of COVID-19, perceived seriousness of COVID-19, and health knowledge to Saudi Arabia.…”

Tamil version of the Fear of COVID-19 Scale

“…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).…”

“…Fear of COVID-19 could worsen mental health and well-being (e.g. among university students, see Gritsenko et al 2020) or it could motivate individuals to comply with the recommended health measures (Harper et al 2020;Winter et al 2020). Ahorsu et al (2020) recently developed the Fear of which measures the severity of fear of COVID-19.…”