The Japanese adaptation and validation of the COVID‐19 Phobia Scale (C19P‐S)

Abstract

There exists a significant need of screening, measuring, and assessing phobic reactions to the negative effects and consequences of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) across the world. For this purpose, the C19P‐S has been developed and adapted to several languages and cultures including Turkish, Russian, Arabic, English, Korean, and soforth. This study aimed to adapt the scale into Japanese. Convenience sampling was used in the recruitment of the participants. The sample involved 310 Japanese‐speaking natives from different prefectures of the country (Mean AGE = 49.97; SD = 13.07). The scale is a self‐report instrument, which includes 20, 5‐point Likert‐type items. The scale assesses the levels of COVID‐19 phobia in four areas: Psychological, Somatic, Economic, and Social. The validity (content, construct, convergent, and discriminant) and reliability (internal consistency) analyses were conducted. Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was used for group comparisons. MANOVA results show that women scored statistically higher in the psychological area. Furthermore, the participants with a lower educational level scored higher than those with a higher level in the somatic area. Among other scales measuring fear and anxiety, the C19P‐S Japanese (C19P‐SJ) is the first measurement tool specifically designed and adapted for evaluating coronaphobia. It is suggested that the individuals with psychiatric diagnoses be included to measure and support the construct validity of the scale.

Reliability and validity of the Chinese version of the COVID-19 Phobia Scale

“…Furthermore, the CFA results and the convergent validity provide strong evidence for using the C19P-SC to assess the presence of coronaphobia in China. These results were consistent with prior research findings [ 10 , 29 , 31 ]. The C19P-SC is a measurement tool consisting of 20 items and includes four factors: psychological, somatic, social, and economic.…”

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]. [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.…”