Clinically significant fear and anxiety of COVID-19: A psychometric examination of the Coronavirus Anxiety Scale

• Published in: Psychiatry research Vol. 290; p. 113112
• Main Authors: Lee, Sherman A., Mathis, Amanda A., Jobe, Mary C., Pappalardo, Emily A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Ireland Elsevier B.V 01-08-2020
• Subjects: Adaptation, Psychological; Adolescent; Adult; Affect; Anxiety; Anxiety - diagnosis; Anxiety - psychology; Betacoronavirus; Coronavirus (COVID-19); Coronavirus Infections - prevention & control; Coronavirus Infections - psychology; COVID-19; Factor Analysis, Statistical; Fear - psychology; Female; Humans; Male; Mental health screener; Middle Aged; Pandemics - prevention & control; Pneumonia, Viral - prevention & control; Pneumonia, Viral - psychology; Psychiatric Status Rating Scales - standards; Psychometrics; Quarantine - psychology; Reproducibility of Results; SARS-CoV-2; Surveys and Questionnaires; United States; Young Adult; United States; Coronavirus (COVID-19); Mental health screener; Anxiety
• ISSN: 0165-1781; 1872-7123
• DOI: 10.1016/j.psychres.2020.113112

•The Coronavirus Anxiety Scale (CAS) is a mental health screener designed to aid healthcare professionals and researchers in identifying probable cases of dysfunctional anxiety associated with the COVID-19 crisis.•The CAS was shown to have solid psychometric properties, such as a stable and invariant factor structure with diagnostic qualities comparable to other psychiatric screening tests.•CAS scores were correlated with coronavirus diagnosis, coronavirus fear, impairment, alcohol/drug coping, religious coping, hopelessness, suicidal ideation, as well as social attitudes (e.g., satisfaction with President Trump).
The present study examined the psychometric properties of the Coronavirus Anxiety Scale (CAS) using an online survey of 398 adult Amazon MTurk workers in the U.S. Confirmatory factor analyses demonstrated that the CAS measures a reliable (α = 0.92), unidimensional construct with a structure that was shown to be invariant across gender, race, and age. Construct validity was demonstrated with correlations between CAS scores and demographics, coronavirus diagnosis, history of anxiety, coronavirus fear, functional impairment, alcohol/drug coping, religious coping, hopelessness, suicidal ideation, as well as social attitudes (e.g., satisfaction with President Trump). The CAS also demonstrated solid discrimination ability for functional impairment (AUC =0.88), while the original cut score of ≥9 (76% sensitivity and 90% specificity) showed the strongest diagnostic effectiveness among scores. Overall, these findings are largely consistent with the results of the first CAS investigation and support the validity of this mental health screener for COVID-19 related research and practice.