Abstract

SILVA, Washington Allysson Dantas; BRITO, Tátila Rayane de Sampaio; DANTAS, Lucas Gabriel Feitosa  and  SIMEAO, Shirley Souza Silva. Psychometric characteristics of the Brazilian version of the Fear of COVID-19 Scale. Arq. bras. psicol. [online]. 2020, vol.72, n.3, pp. 5-18. ISSN 1809-5267.  http://dx.doi.org/10.36482/1809-5267.ARBP2020v72i3p.5-18.

Different studies have been assessing the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health. Nonetheless, in Brazil, a few studies approach the fear associated with COVID-19 as a research problem. Therefore, this article presents the process of adaptation and testing of the psychometric properties of the Fear of COVID-19 Scale (FCV-19S) to the Brazilian context through two studies. In Study 1 (N = 464), we performed an exploratory factor analysis and we identified a unifatorial and reliable structure (α = 0.85) of the FCV-19S. In Study 2 (N = 199) a confirmatory factorial analysis reaffirmed the unifatorial structure and reliability (α = 0.87). In addition, evidence of convergent-discriminating validity and invariance by gender were identified. Taken together, these results suggest that FCV-19S has good psychometric properties of validity and reliability, and may be useful for studies approached in the impacts of fear associated to COVID-19 on mental health.

Keywords : Fear; Psychometrics; Mental health.

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