The Fear of Covid-19 Scale (FCV-19S) in Spain: Adaptation and Confirmatory Evidence of Construct and Concurrent Validity

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This manuscript presents the validation in the Spanish of a fear of COVID scale. Overall, it reflects an important topic in the current pandemic, and the adapted scale would be a useful addition to the repertoire of measures of its psychological effects worldwide. Nevertheless, there are significant issues that need to be addressed and/or included in the paper and data analysis before making the manuscript acceptable for publication.

Major issues:

- items’ standardized factor loadings should also be included in Table 1, as well as standardized multiple correlations. This could contribute to the identification of certain items that are candidate for exclusion (as having these values lower than .25 - Hair, Black, Babin, & Anderson, 2010)

- the selection of the model fit indices should be explained (with references), and their thresholds for good fit mentioned. Relatedly, the thresholds (referenced) for AVE and CRI should be also presented.

- line 229 RMSEA and CFI “assess the fit of the model from different perspectives” – these different perspectives should be explained.

- besides the relationships in the structural model, the simple correlations between the variables should also be presented. These one-to-one relationships between the new / adapted scale and other measures that past theoretical and empirical research indicate that the construct being measured by the new scale (i.e., fear of COVID) should be related to represent the criterion to judge the concurrent validity of the scale (and not a complex model of intertwined relationships, as that tested by the authors through SEM). So, if indeed the adapted scale properly measures fear of COVID, the pattern of simple associations to gender, age, risk group and neuroticism should be close to that emerged from past studies, and reviewed in the Introduction (where the relationship of each factor with fear of COVID is presented individually). Alternatively, if the authors also want to control the common variance of these factors, a structural model can be used to assess concurrent validity, but one with all the factors parallel in their causal status (and not with one as mediator). The complex structural model, which supplementary includes neuroticism as mediator, should be presented as an extension of the validation study, but definite conclusions on the validity of the scale cannot be drawn from its results.

- there is no comment on the skewness and kurtosis values, which would be necessary since there is one item with a skew above the 2 recommended limit, as well as 2 items with kurtosis values above the threshold of 2 that is recommended by some authors. Moreover, normality should also be assessed at the multivariate level, and if this condition is not met an alternative method of computing model fit indices should be used, such as the Bollen-Stine bootstrapping.

- the type of coefficients reported in Fig. 1 should be specified in the Note.

- the comparison between CFI, RMSEA and SRMR is already included in the Results, only the main idea should be kept in the Discussion. Importantly, the result of the RMSEA below its acceptable limit is a significant limit of the scale, and should be acknowledged as such. Alternatively, maybe also based on the other indicators suggested, some items could be eliminated to increase model fit.

- The relationship with living alone / living with other family members is presented as a factor of fear of COVID in the Introduction, but it was not included in the data analysis. I recommend its inclusion in the Results, using an index extracted the relevant data provided by participants as described from line 166, at least in the correlations table. If not, its dedicated paragraph in the Introduction should be shortened.

- line 282 “An interesting result is that neuroticism also appears as a mediating variable between age and fear of the coronavirus, and between gender and fear of the coronavirus. That is, only those young people who present high levels of neuroticism will present a greater fear of COVID” – the mediation does not imply that “only those young people who present high levels of neuroticism will present a greater fear of COVID”, but that younger people are more neurotic, which further leads to their more intense fear of COVID. The similar discussion of gender below needs also to be corrected accordingly. Similarly, the phrase on line 297 “so young people with higher scores in neuroticism will be more predictive of fear of COVID” needs to be corrected.

- no limits of the study are acknowledged, although they exist – for instance the issue of representativeness of the sample for the Spanish population.

- the changes made according to the previous observations should also be incorporated in the Abstract (e.g., line 20-21).

More minor issues:

- I fail to see the appropriateness of “anxiety behavior” as a keyword for the study/paper.

- Abstract – “FCV-19S has been adapted to Spain” – the full name of the scale has to be mentioned before using the acronym

Abstract - “younger people and women with higher neuroticism scores will be good predictors of fear of COVID.” – the role of neuroticism is to mediate the relationship between gender and age, on the one side, and fear on the other, but this phrase presents neuroticism as another direct predictor. Plus, “will be good predictors” is incorrect, as “younger people and women” are not factors, but categories of a factor of fear;  alternatively, “being young and being a woman” are correct in this case.

- line 87 “rather than fear of the consequences” – consequences of what?

- line 90 “in the sample of fathers, the authors found that women obtained significantly higher scores than men in anxiety about the disease” – how can this gender difference be found in a sample of fathers (i.e., men)?

- “Structural equation modeling has been used” – should be “was used”

- “used to study psychometric properties in a Spanish sample” – of which scale?

- line 102 after discussing the effect of neuroticism on stress and emotional imbalance, the phrase there begins with “On the other hand”, but what follows is a similar review of the role of neuroticism

- an example of item should be offered for each scale used in the Measures section.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Introduction:

(1) Introduction lacks the description of psychological mechanisms behind the fear of COVID-19, i.e., it does not conceptualize why are the natural disasters superimposed to ordinary stressors. For conceptualization, see Urban, M., & Urban, K. (2020). What can we learn from gritty persons? Coping strategies adopted during COVID-19 lockdown. Mediterranean Journal of Clinical Psychology, 8(3). https://doi.org/10.6092/2282-1619/mjcp-2518

(2) Please explain the differences between your instrument and Vaccination Fear Scale (VFS-6), see Malas, O. & Tolsá, M. D. (2021). Vaccination Fear Scale (VFS-6): Development and Initial Validation. Mediterranean Journal of Clinical Psychology, 9(2). https://doi.org/10.13129/2282-1619/mjcp-2971

Methods

(3) Participants' mean age is incorrect (1.16 years).

(4) Explain why you used only TIPI as a second measure (this instrument only measure divergent validity of your scale). The other instruments should be used to establish convergent validity (such as DASS-21, PSS-10...). 

Results

(5) Descriptive statistics is missing for TIPI. 

(6) Basic intercorrelations between age, risk, five scales from TIPI and your instrument are missing. These are crucial for me before assessing the SEM model, because I cannot see, why you decided employ only one scale for your final model. 

(7) Does RMSEA values range from positive to negative values, or is it a mistake? What are the PCLOSE values? 

Discussion

(8) I would be really careful in interpretation of the results regarding gender, because your sample was not representative and the measure is self-reported. 

(9) I miss the cultural contextualization of your results. Since the measure is self-reported, the differences between gender may be caused by desirability of results (e.g., men wants to be perceived as fearless). 

In your response, please respond to each of my points. 

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

All my previous concerns and observations were addressed. In my opinion, the paper is now suitable to be accepted for publication. 

Author Response

Thank you very much to the reviewer for your comments. We believe that our work has improved a lot from your comments and we have also learned a lot.

Reviewer 2 Report

My concerns were addressed. 

Author Response

Thank you very much to the reviewer for your comments. We believe that our work has improved a lot from your comments and we have also learned a lot.