Phobic COVID-19 Disorder Scale: Development, Dimensionality, and Item-Structure Test

Abstract

Over the century, the world has witnessed a number of pandemics—such as plague, Spanish flu, smallpox, and tuberculosis. Such pandemics have not only resulted in a great loss to human lives but have also affected the economy of many countries. COVID-19, declared as global pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO), is the latest in this series which has hit the world since the last quarter of 2019. Although a number of scales exist to assess fear and distress of individuals related to COVID-19, it is well articulated in the extant literature that sometimes the proposed scales are context specific and lack applicability in multi-cultural environment as also the factors’ structure of the scale are fit from the context of audience from certain geographical regions. Thus, a need was felt to evaluate the FCV-19S and propose and statistically validate a new COVID-19-based scale called Phobic COVID-19 Disorder scale (Phobic-19 scale). A structured e-questionnaire in English was used to collect the data from the respondents. A 12-item, three-dimensional (fear, anxiety, and distress) scale was developed to capture the emotions of general populations towards COVID-19. The study analyzes the dimensionality and item structure of the scale through exploratory factor analysis and further validated with the help of confirmatory factor analysis. The results show that the Phobic-19 scale has a strong internal consistency along with better psychometric characteristics. Mass replication and a large number of empirical research using the Phobic-19 scale would instill confidence amongst scholars and practitioners in the results. The findings also highlight that the results would help to advance our understanding by providing critical information related to COVID-19 and ensure that the scale provides accurate and usable data.