Chung-Ying Lin, Wen-Li Hou, Mohammed A Mamun, José Aparecido da Silva, Yunier Broche-Pérez, Irfan Ullah, Akihiro Masuyama, Koubun Wakashima, Mélody Mailliez, Arnaud Carre, Yu-Pin Chen, Kun-Chia Chang, Yi-Jie Kuo, Paolo Soraci, Damian Scarf, Anders Broström, Mark D Griffiths, Amir H Pakpour
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)...
March 21, 2021: Nursing Open