The validation of Corona Anxiety Questionnaire in Iranian Population

Abstract

\n Background: Anxiety is an evolutionary mental status that alerts a person from possible dangers: inside or outside dangers. One of the external dangers that threaten global society these days is Corona s disease. It has reported since 2020 January in Iran and has killed more than 8000 people during 5 month. But someone are unaware of the importance and danger of Corona or they don t consider any reason to worry. The aim of this study was to design and standardize a special questionnaire for corona anxiety in the Iranian population. Because of it, with the help of 10 psychologists and psychiatrics found 8 scales and wrote 36 question. Questionnaire asked from 523 internet operators by porsline.ir all over Iran. Method: To assess the reliability, kappa statistic was calculated and for construct validity, exploratory factor analysis (EFA) with Varimax rotation and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) were used. Convergent and discriminant validity was checked using Spearman correlation and for content validity index (CVR) was used. Result: Reliability for the most items was high. Questionnaire showed excellent convergent and discriminant validity except for social support subscale. The results of categorical confirmatory factor analysis supported the fit of the eight-factor model of the Corona Anxiety Scales-36. Furthermore, the average of CVR was higher than acceptance level (0.62). Conclusion: The findings showed that the corona anxiety questionnaire is a questionnaire with appropriate validity and reliability for use in anxiety related to the unknown corona disease.