Qom University of Medical Sciences Journal

oronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) was first identified in December 2019 in Wuhan, China. The symptoms of this disease include fever, cough, and mild to severe breathing problems [1]. The COVID-19 pandemic increased the risk of psychological disorders including schizophrenia, anxiety, depression, and acute stress disorder among healthcare providers and people [2- 4]. Phobia is an anxiety disorder defined by a persistent and excessive fear of an object or a situation. It has three types: Social phobia, agoraphobia, and specific phobia. Five specific phobias listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, include: Natural-environment, animal, blood-injection-injury (fear of injections, fear of blood, fear of injury, fear of medical procedure), situational, and others. The coronaphobia can be defined as a persistent and excessive fear of COVID-19, which can be considered as a new type of specific phobia [5]. Serious negative physiological, social, and economical effects of the COVID-19 pandemic have been observed in many countries. These negative effects can cause conditions such as stress, depression, psychosomatic, and psychosocial disorders. It is important to detect the early signs of coronaphobia to provide timely psychological support for affected individuals [6-8]. The American Psychiatric Association recommends the development of assessment tools adapted to DSM-V criteria for specific phobia disorders. However, since it is a relatively novel problem, no validated tool was found to assess the level of coronaphobia in Iranian samples. In other countries, several questionnaires have recently been developed for this purpose. One of these tools is the COVID-19 phobia scale (C19P-S), which was created by Arpacia et al. [9], but its Persian version has not been standardized yet. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the psychometric properties of the Persian version of C19P-S in Iranian population.
Methods
This is a descriptive correlational study. Participants were 291 people aged 18-60 years in Iran from March to May 2022, who were selected by a convenience sampling method. Inclusion criteria were consent to participate in the study, and no substance abuse. The exclusion criterion was the return of in-complete questionnaire. The following tools were used to collect data online:
C19P-S: This scale was developed by Arpacia et al. [9]. With 20 items to evaluate coronaphobia. The items are rated on a five-point Likert scale from 1= Strongly disagree to 5= Strongly agree. This scale has four subscales: Psychological, psychosomatic, economic, and social factors.
Fear of COVID-19 Scale (FCV-19S): This scale was created by Ahorsu et al. [10] to measure the fear of COVID-19.
Brief version of the difficulties in emotion regulation (DERS): The tool was developed by Bjureberg et al. [11]and has 16 items adapted from the 36-item DERS [12].
Acceptance and action questionnaire-second edition (AAQ-II): This questionnaire was developed by Bond et al. [13] adapted from the 10-item version of AAQ developed by Hayes. This questionnaire measures experiential avoidance/psychological flexibility. Higher scores indicate greater experiential avoidance/psychological flexibility.
Results
The mean scores of the C19P-S subscales of psychological factors, psychosomatic factors, economic factors and social factors were 22.87±2.03, 20.88±1.99, 22.72±2.56 and 23.56±2.40, respectively. All extracted factor loads were greater than 0.3 and the distribution of items in the subscales was consistent with the main version.
Discussion
The purpose of this study was to assess the psychometric properties of the Persian version of C19P-S. The results of confirmatory factor analysis showed that 20 items had high factor loads with four components of psychological factors, psychosomatic factors, economic factors, and social factors. This is consistent with four-factor structure of the main version [9]. The internal consistency of the Persian C19P-S using Cronbach’s alpha coefficient was also acceptable.
The Persian C19P-S with 20 items and four subscales, has acceptable validity and reliability. It can be used to measure coronaphobia in Iranian samples.
Ethical Considerations
Compliance with ethical guidelines
This article was taken from the approved research project of University of Mohaghegh Ardabili (Ethics Code: IR.UMA.REC.1401.006).
Funding
The Honorable Deputy of Research and Technology of  University of  Mohaghegh Ardabili is the financial sponsor of this project and article.
Authors contributions
Conceptualization: Nader Hajloo; Methodology and Writing–Original Draft: Saeed Pourabdol; Investigation: Mahdi Beyki and Amir Mohsen Rahnejat; Writing–Review & Editing: Nader Hajloo and Saeed Pourabdol.
Conflicts of interest
The authors declared no conflict of interest.
Acknowledgements
We are grateful to all the people who helped us in the implementation of this research.