key: cord-0889412-ospveokw
authors: Lin, Chung-Ying; Griffiths, Mark D.; Pakpour, Amir H.
title: Psychometric Properties of the Fear of COVID-19 Scale: a Response to Mercado-Lara et al. “Validity and Reliability of the Spanish Version of Fear of COVID-19 Scale in Colombian Physicians”
date: 2021-09-13
journal: Int J Ment Health Addict
DOI: 10.1007/s11469-021-00635-7
sha: dc7d5304cc9657c9400b6f2ddd00b91613e07f8b
doc_id: 889412
cord_uid: ospveokw

A paper reporting the psychometric properties of the Spanish Fear of COVID-19 Scale (FCV-19S) among Colombian physicians was recently published in the International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction. Although we welcome the translation and validation of our seven-item scale, this commentary outlines some major concerns we have with the study especially the removal of two items in developing a five-item FCV-19S. Based on these concerns, we strongly recommend that healthcare providers and researchers should use the five-item FCV-19S with caution.

recently reported psychometric properties of the Fear of COVID-19 Scale in the Spanish language among Colombian physicians in the International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction. While the authors' efforts to use a valid scale to assess individuals' responses to fear of the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic are commendable, we have some major concerns with their study.

(1) Although the FCV-19S is in the public domain and can be used freely by anyone (including healthcare providers and other research teams), changes in items or how they are used can jeopardize the assessment in relation to the fear of COVID-19 (Ahorsu et al., 2020; Lin et al., 2021) . Unfortunately, Mercado-Lara et al. attempted to develop a brief version of FCV-19S without asking the developers. Although we, the codevelopers of the FCV-19S, always welcome interactions and discussions with other researchers for the optimal use of this tool, shortening the FCV-19S without asking us in advance if they could do so was arguably disrespectful and did not follow standard academic etiquette.

(2) Solely using the factor analysis results to delete an item is not psychometrically justified. There are many considerations that should be paid attention to when an individual wants to reduce the number of items in a psychometrically robust instrument (i.e., FCV-19S). More specifically, the FCV-19S has been translated and tested in over 20 languages with excellent psychometric properties (Lin et al., 2021) . Moreover, the psychometric properties of the Spanish FCV-19S have already been found to be excellent Guillemin et al. (1993) . According to the guidelines proposed by Guillemin et al., (1993) "a committee should be constituted in order to produce a final version of the modified measure based on the various translations and back-translations" (p. 1422). Given that Mercado-Lara et al. did not include a committee review in their translation procedure, it is unclear how the minor divergences were resolved in their translation of the FCV-19S into Spanish. (5) Mercado-Lara et al. (2021) did not clearly state how they conducted their confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) (Li, 2016) . Because the FCV-19S uses an ordinal scale for the responses, the method of estimation (e.g., diagonally weighted least squares) should be used in the CFA to reduce bias in estimating the factor loadings.

The Fear of COVID-19 Scale: Development and initial validation

Cross-cultural adaptation of health-related quality of life measures: Literature review and proposed guidelines

Cultural adaptation and validation of an instrument on barriers for the use of research results

Psychometric properties of a Spanish version of the Fear of COVID-19 Scale in general population of Lima

Confirmatory factor analysis with ordinal data: Comparing robust maximum likelihood and diagonally weighted least squares

Fear of COVID-19 Scale (FCV-19S) across countries: Measurement invariance issues

The Fear of COVID-19 Scale: Validation in Spanish university students

Validity and reliability of the Spanish version of fear of COVID-19 Scale in Colombian physicians