Validity and Reliability of the Stress and Anxiety to Viral Epidemics-6 (SAVE-6) Scale to Measure Viral Anxiety of Healthcare Workers in Spain During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Marta Moraleda-Cibrián; Oli Ahmed; Javier Albares-Tendero; Seockhoon Chung

doi:10.3389/fpsyt.2021.796225

Validity and Reliability of the Stress and Anxiety to Viral Epidemics-6 (SAVE-6) Scale to Measure Viral Anxiety of Healthcare Workers in Spain During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Front Psychiatry. 2022 Feb 1:12:796225. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2021.796225. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Marta Moraleda-Cibrián¹, Oli Ahmed^{2

3}, Javier Albares-Tendero¹, Seockhoon Chung⁴

Affiliations

¹ Sleep Disorders Center, Centro Médico Teknon, Barcelona, Spain.
² Department of Psychology, University of Chittagong, Chattogram, Bangladesh.
³ Research School of Population Health, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia.
⁴ Department of Psychiatry, Asan Medical Center, University of Ulsan College of Medicine, Seoul, South Korea.

Abstract

This study examined the validity and applicability of the Spanish version of the Stress and Anxiety to Viral Epidemics-6 items (SAVE-6) scale, which can be usually applied to the general population, to healthcare workers to briefly measure their anxiety responses to the viral epidemic. A total of 135 healthcare workers participated in this online survey from January to July 2021. Participants' sociodemographic characteristics were gathered, and their psychiatric symptoms were rated using SAVE-6, Goldberg Anxiety and Depression Scale (GDAS), and the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI). The confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to examine the validity of the scales. The single-structure model of the SAVE-6 scale was adopted based on the results of the parallel analysis. We decided on the SAVE-6 scale, as it proved to be a good fit to measure healthcare workers' anxiety response to the viral epidemic. SAVE-6 showed good internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha = 0.827 and McDonald's omega = 0.834) and good convergent validity with Goldberg anxiety (r = 0.434, p < 0.001) and depression (r = 0.193, p = 0.043) scores, and PSQI score (r = 0.262, p = 0.002). The Spanish version of SAVE-6 is a reliable and valid rating scale to assess the anxiety response of healthcare workers specifically to the viral epidemic as a brief measure during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Keywords: COVID-19; SAVE-6; anxiety; health personnel; stress.