Fear of COVID‐19 Scale (FCV‐19S) across countries: measurement invariance issues

Lin, C, Hou, W, Mamun, MA, Aparecido da Silva, J, Broche‐Pérez, Y, Ullah, I, Masuyama, A, Wakashima, K, Mailliez, M, Carre, A, Chen, Y, Chang, K, Kuo, Y, Soraci, P, Scarf, D, Broström, A, Griffiths, MD ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8880-6524 and Pakpour, AH, 2021. Fear of COVID‐19 Scale (FCV‐19S) across countries: measurement invariance issues. Nursing Open, 8 (4), pp. 1892-1908. ISSN 2054-1058

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Abstract

Aim: The threats of novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) have caused fears worldwide. The Fear of COVID-19 Scale (FCV-19S) was recently developed to assess the fear of COVID-19. Although many studies found that the FCV-19S is psychometrically sound, it is unclear whether the FCV-19S is invariant across countries. The present study aimed to examine the measurement invariance of the FCV-19S across eleven countries.

Design: Cross-sectional study.

Methods: Using data collected from prior research on Bangladesh (N = 8,550), United Kingdom (N = 344), Brazil (N = 1,843), Taiwan (N = 539), Italy (N = 249), New Zealand (N = 317), Iran (N = 717), Cuba (N = 772), Pakistan (N = 937), Japan (N = 1,079) and France (N = 316), comprising a total 15,663 participants, the present study used the multigroup confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and Rasch differential item functioning (DIF) to examine the measurement invariance of the FCV-19S across country, gender and age (children aged below 18 years, young to middle-aged adults aged between 18 and 60 years, and older people aged above 60 years).

Results: The unidimensional structure of the FCV-19S was confirmed. Multigroup CFA showed that FCV-19S was partially invariant across country and fully invariant across gender and age. DIF findings were consistent with the findings from multigroup CFA. Many DIF items were displayed for country, few DIF items were displayed for age, and no DIF items were displayed for gender.

Conclusion: Based on the results of the present study, the FCV-19S is a good psychometric instrument to assess fear of COVID-19 during the pandemic period. Moreover, the use of FCV-19S is supported in at least ten countries with satisfactory psychometric properties.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	Nursing Open
Creators:	Lin, C., Hou, W., Mamun, M.A., Aparecido da Silva, J., Broche‐Pérez, Y., Ullah, I., Masuyama, A., Wakashima, K., Mailliez, M., Carre, A., Chen, Y., Chang, K., Kuo, Y., Soraci, P., Scarf, D., Broström, A., Griffiths, M.D. and Pakpour, A.H.
Publisher:	Wiley
Date:	July 2021
Volume:	8
Number:	4
ISSN:	2054-1058
Identifiers:	Number Type 10.1002/nop2.855 DOI 1427084 Other
Rights:	© 2021 The Authors. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Divisions:	Schools > School of Social Sciences
Record created by:	Jeremy Silvester
Date Added:	24 Mar 2021 11:38
Last Modified:	06 Jul 2021 08:44
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/42573

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