Abstract:The aim of the study was to explore the relationships among cyberchondria, fear of COVID-19, health anxiety, obsessions, sleep quality, and negative affect in a national community sample of Turkish participants. A sample of 8,276 volunteers, aged between 18 and 65, were recruited via an online platform. The Perceived Vulnerability about Diseases Questionnaire, Fear of COVID-19 Scale, Cyberchondria Severity Scale, Short Health Anxiety Inventory, Depression Stress Anxiety Scale-21, Obsessive–Compulsive Inventory… Show more
“…The respondents are asked to rate the items on a five-point scale and the higher score reflects the higher severity of cyberchondria (McElroy et al, 2019 ). Turkish form of the CSS-12 has original factor structure and good psychometric characteristics (Yalçın et al, 2022 ). The Turkish version of the CSS-12 revealed high internal consistency on the present data with Cronbach’s alphas ranging from 0.72 to 0.89.…”
Section: Methodsmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Supporting these findings, Akbari et al ( 2021 ) converged a full mediation structural model in which relationship between COVID-19 and health anxiety was mediated by intolerance of uncertainty, emotional regulation capability and metacognitions, accounting for 71% of the unique variance of health anxiety. In a more recent national community survey conducted among a sample of 8,276 Turkish volunteers, Yalçın et al ( 2022 ) reported that perceived vulnerability to diseases significantly contributed to cyberchondria and indirectly predicted deterioration in sleep quality via cyberchondria.…”
The aim of the study was to converge a structural equation model to unfold the compositive relationships between trait impulsivity, health cognitions, metacognitions about health, fear of COVID-19 and cyberchondria, after controlling for gender, age, marital status, having a chronic illness and chronic illness among first-degree relatives. Six hundred fifty-one participants (423 females, 65%; 228 males, 35%) participated in the study. The Short UPPS-P Impulsive Behavior Scale (S-UPPS-P), Health Cognitions Questionnaire (HCQ), The Meta-Cognitions about Health Questionnaire (MCQ-HA), Cyberchondria Severity Scale –Short Form (CSS-12), and Fear of COVID-19 Scale (FCV-19 S) were completed by volunteered participants. The structural model showed that the S-UPPS-P directly and indirectly contributed to the HCQ, MCQ-HA, CSS-12, and FCV-19 S. The multi-group structural analysis by gender showed that the structural model had a partial measurement and factorial invariance. We concluded that the significant associations between impulsivity, fear of COVID-19 and cyberchondria were indirectly contributed by health-related cognitions and metacognitions.
“…The respondents are asked to rate the items on a five-point scale and the higher score reflects the higher severity of cyberchondria (McElroy et al, 2019 ). Turkish form of the CSS-12 has original factor structure and good psychometric characteristics (Yalçın et al, 2022 ). The Turkish version of the CSS-12 revealed high internal consistency on the present data with Cronbach’s alphas ranging from 0.72 to 0.89.…”
Section: Methodsmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Supporting these findings, Akbari et al ( 2021 ) converged a full mediation structural model in which relationship between COVID-19 and health anxiety was mediated by intolerance of uncertainty, emotional regulation capability and metacognitions, accounting for 71% of the unique variance of health anxiety. In a more recent national community survey conducted among a sample of 8,276 Turkish volunteers, Yalçın et al ( 2022 ) reported that perceived vulnerability to diseases significantly contributed to cyberchondria and indirectly predicted deterioration in sleep quality via cyberchondria.…”
The aim of the study was to converge a structural equation model to unfold the compositive relationships between trait impulsivity, health cognitions, metacognitions about health, fear of COVID-19 and cyberchondria, after controlling for gender, age, marital status, having a chronic illness and chronic illness among first-degree relatives. Six hundred fifty-one participants (423 females, 65%; 228 males, 35%) participated in the study. The Short UPPS-P Impulsive Behavior Scale (S-UPPS-P), Health Cognitions Questionnaire (HCQ), The Meta-Cognitions about Health Questionnaire (MCQ-HA), Cyberchondria Severity Scale –Short Form (CSS-12), and Fear of COVID-19 Scale (FCV-19 S) were completed by volunteered participants. The structural model showed that the S-UPPS-P directly and indirectly contributed to the HCQ, MCQ-HA, CSS-12, and FCV-19 S. The multi-group structural analysis by gender showed that the structural model had a partial measurement and factorial invariance. We concluded that the significant associations between impulsivity, fear of COVID-19 and cyberchondria were indirectly contributed by health-related cognitions and metacognitions.
“…The higher the score, the higher the severity of cyberchondria (McElroy et al., 2019 ). The CSS‐12 was adapted to Turkish by Yalçın, Boysan, Eşkisu, and Çam ( 2022 ) and yielded good validity and reliability with Cronbach's alphas ranging from 0.78 to 0.94. In the present study, The Turkish version of the CSS‐12 was found to have high internal consistency with Cronbach's alphas ranging from 0.71 to 0.87.…”
The study was set out to explore the structural relationships between fear of COVID‐19, cyberchondria, intolerance of uncertainty, and obsessional probabilistic inferences. The data were recruited online from a community population (
n
= 1,049) subjected to a confirmatory factor analytic procedure. The structural model specified according to the previous findings in the literature showed that a general tendency to negative expectations in terms of probabilistic thinking was significantly associated with both COVID‐19‐related‐fear and intolerance of uncertainty. Fear of COVID‐19 was significantly associated with cyberchondria. Probabilistic thinking style and intolerance of uncertainty contributed to cyberchondria through fear of COVID‐19 as well. We concluded that a tendency to engage in a probabilistic thinking style and intolerance of uncertainty seems to play role in the etiology of fear of infection and cyberchondria.
“…These trends worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic, triggering an increase in health anxiety and a search for information about a mysterious and frightening infection (17). Persons with a high fear of pandemic often search the Internet for information about COVID-19 disease, so fear of COVID-19 was closely associated with cyberchondria (18)(19)(20).…”
Section: Fear Of Covid- Cyberchondria and Preventive Behaviormentioning
BackgroundThere is extensive available research on the relationship between fear of COVID-19 pandemic and physical symptoms. This study was the first to examine the cyberchondria and COVID-19 preventive behavior as mediators of this relationship.MethodsA cross-sectional study was conducted from October to December 2021, during the fourth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Russia. The participants were 2,011 Russian-speaking volunteers aged 18 years and older. They completed questionnaires on somatic burden, cyberchondria, COVID-19 preventive behavior, and fear of COVID-19 pandemic. Mediation analysis was used to explore the mediating roles of cyberchondria and preventive behavior in the relationship between fear of COVID-19 and somatic burden.ResultsFear of COVID-19 positively predicted somatic burden, cyberchondria, and COVID-19 preventive behavior. Mediation analysis showed that the relationship between fear of COVID-19 pandemic and somatic burden was mediated by cyberchondria (effect = 0.08, bootstrapping SE = 0.01, bootstrapping 95% CI [0.08, 0.12]), but not COVID-19 preventive behavior (effect = 0.02, bootstrapping SE = 0.01, bootstrapping 95% CI [0.00, 0.05]).ConclusionThe findings suggest that cyberchondria had negative effects on somatic burden during the COVID-19 pandemic. The knowledge of the mediating role of cyberchondria may be used by health care workers when consulting persons with physical health complaints and psychosomatic disorders.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.