Fear of COVID-19 scale: Psychometric characteristics, reliability and validity in the Israeli population
Autor
Tzur Bitana, Dana
Grossman-Giron, Ariella
Bloch, Yuval
Mayer, Yael
Shiffman, Noga
Mendlovic, Shlomo
Institución
Resumen
Mental health clinicians worldwide have been expressing concerns regarding the broad psychological effects of
the COVID-19 pandemic. Nonetheless, only a few studies have thus far evaluated the degree of fear of COVID-19,
partially due to the lack of validated measures. In this study we evaluated the psychometric properties of the
Hebrew version of the Fear of COVID-19 scale (FCV-19S), recently developed to assess different aspects of the
fear of the pandemic, in a normative population of participants in Israel. Participants (n = 639) were asked to
complete the FCV-19S scale, as well as to report anxiety, depression, and stress levels using validated scales. The
results a unidimensional factor structure of the FCV-19S which explained 53.71% of the variance. When forcing
a two-factor structure model, the analysis revealed two factors pertaining to emotional fear reactions and
symptomatic expressions of fear. Gender, sociodemographic status, chronic illness, being in an at-risk group, and
having a family member dying of COVID-19 were positively associated with fear of COVID-19. The measure was
associated with anxiety, stress and depression. These results suggest that the FCV-19S has good psychometric
properties, and can be utilized in studies assessing the effects of the pandemic on the population's mental health.