The Fear of COVID-19 Scale: Psychometric Properties of the Ethiopian Amharic Version
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The Fear of COVID-19 Scale: Psychometric Properties of the Ethiopian Amharic Version Aman Sado Elemo 1
& Seydi Ahmet Satici
2
& Mark D. Griffiths
3
Accepted: 19 November 2020/ # The Author(s) 2020
Abstract
Fear is an adaptive response that alerts individuals to the presence of a danger or threat. However, in the context of the current novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, the fear experienced could be intense because the number of victims of the virus is continuously increasing globally and is inducing severe mental health concerns. The seven-item Fear of COVID-19 Scale (FCV-19S) assesses the severity of fear related to COVID-19 and has already been validated in many languages. The present study evaluated the psychometric properties of the Amharic (Ethiopian) version of the FCV19S. An online survey including the Amharic versions of the FCV-19S and the six-item UCLA Loneliness Scale (ULS-6) was administered to 307 Amharic-speaking participants using convenience sampling. The participants’ age ranged between 18 and 70 years. In the evaluation process, confirmatory factor analysis, Item Response Theory, concurrent validity, and reliabilities (Cronbach’s alpha, McDonald’s omega, Guttman’s lambda, and composite reliability) of the Amharic version of the FCV-19S were performed. The unidimensional structure of the FCV-19S was confirmed and the Amharic version of the FCV-19S had strong psychometric properties. All reliability coefficients of the Amharic FCV-19S were satisfactory, with sound concurrent validity shown by significant and positive correlations with loneliness. The results indicate that the FCV-19S can be used in research to assess the fear of COVID-19 among Amharic-speaking populations. Keywords COVID-19 . Coronavirus-2019 . Fear of COVID-19 . Loneliness . Ethiopia . Amharic The novel coronavirus desease-19 (COVID-19) outbreak has been deemed a global health emergency by the World Health Organization (WHO 2020a). As it has spreads across the
* Mark D. Griffiths [email protected] Aman Sado Elemo [email protected] Seydi Ahmet Satici [email protected] Extended author information available on the last page of the article
International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction
world, the pandemic has induced worries and fears increasing the risks of mental health problems. Internationally, the number of confirmed coronavirus cases has continued to increase and has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives. At the time of writing (November 2020), the number of internationally confirmed COVID-19 cases was over 55 million and over 1.32 million deaths (WHO 2020a). In the case of Africa, although the continent accounts for a small fraction of the total global COVID-19 cases, the increase in the number of confirmed cases is still alarming since the first case was recorded in mid-February 2020. By mid-November 2020, the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases had exceeded 1.9 million resulting in more than 46,800 deaths in the continent (Africa Center for Disease Control 2020). South Africa,
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