Psychometric Validation of the Bangla Fear of COVID-19 Scale: Confirmatory Factor Analysis and Rasch Analysis

By Najmuj Sakib, A. I. Bhuiyan, S. Hossain, Firoj Al Mamun, I. Hosen, A. Abdullah, Md. Abedin Sarker, M. Mohiuddin, Istihak Rayhan, Moazzem Hossain and 7 more. International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction, 2020

398 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The recently developed Fear of COVID-19 Scale (FCV-19S) is a seven-item uni-dimensional scale that assesses the severity of fears of COVID-19. Given the rapid increase of COVID-19 cases in Bangladesh, we aimed to translate and validate the FCV-19S in Bangla. The forward-backward translation method was used to translate the English version of the questionnaire into Bangla. The reliability and validity properties of the Bangla FCV-19S were rigorously psychometrically evaluated (utilizing both confirmatory factor analysis and Rasch analysis) in relation to socio-demographic variables, national lockdown variables, and response to the Bangla Health Patient Questionnaire. The sample comprised 8550 Bangladeshi participants. The Cronbach α value for the Bangla FCV-19S was 0.871 indicating very good internal reliability. The results of the confirmatory factor analysis showed that the uni-dimensional factor structure of the FCV-19S fitted well with the data. The FCV-19S was significantly correlated with the nine-item Bangla Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-90) ( r  = 0.406, p  < 0.001). FCV-19S scores were significantly associated with higher worries concerning lockdown. Measurement invariance of the FCV-19S showed no differences with respect to age or gender. The Bangla version of FCV-19S is a valid and reliable tool with robust psychometric properties which will be useful for researchers carrying out studies among the Bangla speaking population in assessing the psychological impact of fear from COVID-19 infection during this pandemic.

Subfields: Clinical Psychology, Economics and Econometrics, Modeling and Simulation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/44f8fe30962b863cc119b551ddec006c93d2bd63

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Citations in the corpus

• Fear of COVID-19 and Positivity: Mediating Role of Intolerance of Uncertainty, Depression, Anxiety, and Stress (2020, background): “Additionally, the FCV-19S was confirmed in Bangla (Sakib et al. 2020), Italy (Soraci et al. 2020), and Eastern Europe (Reznik et al. 2020) versions.”
• Psychometric Properties of the Greek Version of FCV-19S (2020, methodology): “2020) and previous validation findings in Italy, Bangladesh, and Turkey (Sakib et al. 2020; Satici et al. 2020; Soraci et al. 2020), yet with rather modest factor loadings.”
• Validation of the Fear of COVID-19 Scale in a US College Sample (2020, background): “Its psychometric qualities were explored with samples from Italy (Soraci et al. 2020), Turkey (Satici et al. 2020), Bangladesh (Sakib et al. 2020), Eastern Europe (Reznik et al. 2020), and Saudi Arabia (Alyami et al. 2020).”