Development and Validation of the COVID-19 Worries and Fears Scale

Esther Cuadrado; Alicia Arenas; Manuel Moyano; Martina La Gamma

doi:10.3389/ijph.2022.1604600

Development and Validation of the COVID-19 Worries and Fears Scale

Int J Public Health. 2023 Jan 9:67:1604600. doi: 10.3389/ijph.2022.1604600. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Esther Cuadrado^{1

2}, Alicia Arenas^{2

3}, Manuel Moyano^{1

2}, Martina La Gamma⁴

Affiliations

¹ Department of Psychology, University of Cordoba, Córdoba, Spain.
² Maimonides Biomedical Research Institute of Cordoba (IMIBIC), Cordoba, Spain.
³ Department of Social Psychology, Universidad de Sevilla, Seville, Spain.
⁴ Department of Psychology, University of Florence, Florence, Italy.

Abstract

Objectives: How individuals perceive the risk of COVID-19 influences their mental health and protective behaviors. Therefore, the development of an instrument to capture COVID-19-related worries and fears is relevant. This study aims to develop and validate the CoV-WoFe to measure COVID-19-related worries and fears. Methods: An online questionnaire was completed by 593 participants during Christmas 2020 and by 328 participants during Summer 2021, from which 88 participants formed a longitudinal sample. Results: Analyses confirmed a robust adjustment for consistency over time and a gender-invariant bifactorial structure. Factor 1 represented worry about the health consequences of COVID-19 and Factor 2 represented the perceived physiological symptoms associated with fear of COVID-19. Construct validity was evidenced by: the expected relations between the CoV-WoFe and other theoretically related constructs; the serial mediating role of both dimensions in the relationship that security values establish with protective behaviors against COVID-19 and with anxiety; and the expected gender differences in the Cov-WoFe. Conclusion: The CoV-WoFe represents a short, valid, reliable, gender-invariant tool that is easy to apply in both the health professional and research context to assessCOVID-19-related worries and fears, which are variables of relevance for spread of the virus and for mental health.

Keywords: COVID-19; anxiety; fears; protective behavior; scale development; worries.

MeSH terms

Anxiety / epidemiology
COVID-19* / epidemiology
COVID-19* / psychology
Fear / psychology
Humans
SARS-CoV-2
Surveys and Questionnaires

Grants and funding

The data collection was financially supported by the University of Cordoba, in the Ucoimpulsa modality of the Own Research Plan of the University of Cordoba, in which EC is the main researcher.