The Coronavirus Anxiety Scale: Cross-national measurement invariance and convergent validity evidence.

Coronavirus Anxiety Scale (CAS) is a widely used measure that captures somatic symptoms of coronavirus-related anxiety. In a large-scale collaboration spanning 60 countries (Ntotal = 21,513), we examined the CAS's measurement invariance and assessed the convergent validity of CAS scores in relation to the fear of COVID-19 (FCV-19S) and the satisfaction with life (SWLS-3) scales. We utilized both conventional exact invariance tests and alignment procedures, with results revealing that the single-factor model fit the data well in almost all countries. Partial scalar invariance was supported in a subset of 56 countries. To ensure the robustness of results, given the unbalanced samples, we employed resampling techniques both with and without replacement and found the results were more stable in larger samples. The alignment procedure demonstrated a high degree of measurement invariance with 9% of the parameters exhibiting noninvariance. We also conducted simulations of alignment using the parameters estimated in the current model. Findings demonstrated reliability of the means but indicated challenges in estimating the latent variances. Strong positive correlations between CAS and FCV-19S estimated with all three different approaches were found in most countries. Correlations of CAS and SWLS-3 were weak and negative but significantly differed from zero in several countries. Overall, the study provided support for the measurement invariance of the CAS and offered evidence of its convergent validity while also highlighting issues with variance estimation. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Factors Associated With Highest Symptoms of Anxiety During COVID-19: Cross-Cultural Study of 23 Countries.

The COVID-19 restrictions have impacted people's lifestyles in all spheres (social, psychological, political, economic, and others). This study explored which factors affected the level of anxiety during the time of the first wave of COVID-19 and subsequent quarantine in a substantial proportion of 23 countries, included in this study. The data was collected from May to August 2020 (5 June 2020). The sample included 15,375 participants from 23 countries: (seven from Europe: Belarus, Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Italy, Romania, Russia; 11 from West, South and Southeast Asia: Armenia, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Malaysia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Turkey; two African: Nigeria and Tanzania; and three from North, South, and Central America: Brazil, Canada, United States). Level of anxiety was measured by means of the 7-item Generalized Anxiety Disorder Scale (GAD-7) and the 20-item first part of The State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI)-State Anxiety Inventory (SAI). Respondents were also asked about their personal experiences with COVID-19, attitudes toward measures introduced by governments, changes in attitudes toward migrants during a pandemic, family income, isolation conditions, etc. The factor analysis revealed that four factors explained 45.08% of variance in increase of anxiety, and these components were interpreted as follows: (1) personal awareness of the threat of COVID-19, (2) personal reaction toward officially undertaken measures and attitudes to foreigners, (3) personal trust in official sources, (4) personal experience with COVID-19. Three out of four factors demonstrated strong associations with both scales of anxiety: high level of anxiety was significantly correlated with high level of personal awareness of the threat of COVID-19, low level of personal reaction toward officially undertaken measures and attitudes to foreigners, and high level of presence of personal experience with COVID-19. Our study revealed significant main effects of sex, country, and all four factors on the level of anxiety. It was demonstrated that countries with higher levels of anxiety assessed the real danger of a pandemic as higher, and had more personal experience with COVID-19. Respondents who trusted the government demonstrated lower levels of anxiety. Finally, foreigners were perceived as the cause of epidemic spread.