Investigation of Psychometric Properties of Persian Version of Fear of COVID-19 Scale in Nurses

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic, which has become the most challenging issue for health organizations and governments, has led to panic among healthcare workers, especially nurses. Faced with patients, insufficient access to personal protective equipment and labor shortages have made nurses afraid of COVID-19.Objective: The present study was conducted to investigate the psychometric properties of the Persian version of the Fear of COVID-19 Scale (FCV-19S) on emergency nurses.Method: This cross-sectional study was performed on 295 nurses. Face and content validity were checked qualitatively. Construct validity was checked using exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). The number of factors was determined based on parallel analysis and items with a factor load of 0.30 and above were retained. Cronbach's alpha and McDonald omega coefficients were used to evaluate the internal consistency.Results: The mean age of nurses was 30.37±5.46 years (22-50 years). In exploratory factor analysis, a factor was extracted that explained 54.75% of the total variance of fear of COVID-19. In the confirmatory factor analysis, the fit indices were all appropriate: CMIN/df=1.515, GFI= 0.916, AGFI=0.903, NFI=0.938, IFI=0.953, CFI=0.9, and RMSEA=0.064. Cronbach's alpha and McDonald’s Omega coefficients were 0.920 and 0.787, respectively.Conclusion: Fear of COVID-19 Scale has good validity and reliability in the Iranian sample of nurses and can be used in various studies.