Lieven Theo
Institute for Mobility, University of St. Gallen, Bahnhofstr. 8, 9000 St. Gallen, Switzerland.
Curr Psychol. 2021 Dec 2:1-11. doi: 10.1007/s12144-021-02583-w.
The five-item Coronavirus Anxiety Scale (CAS) was found to be a useful and valid mental health screener. Participants in the respective surveys were mostly from single countries such as the US, Turkey, Mexico, or Brazil. However, a cross-cultural re-examination is lacking. This study fills this gap. In several multigroup confirmatory factor analyses with 25 countries from five continents as groups, sex and age as groups, and different stages of concern with COVID-19 infection, CAS was found to be invariant across all groups; this indicates that CAS is appropriate for meaningfully comparing the results across different groups. On a global basis, Coronavirus anxiety did not differ between female and male participants. Regarding age, however, younger individuals suffered more from anxiety of the pandemic. Individualistic cultures and those with low power distance such as in the Western hemisphere had higher COVID-19 anxiety. CAS values were also higher for those individuals who had been infected by COVID-19, those whose relatives had been infected, and those who experienced COVID-19-related death in the family. Overall, CAS is a parsimonious, valid, and reliable mental health screener on a global basis.
五项冠状病毒焦虑量表（CAS）被证明是一种有用且有效的心理健康筛查工具。各调查中的参与者大多来自美国、土耳其、墨西哥或巴西等单一国家。然而，缺乏跨文化的重新审视。本研究填补了这一空白。在几项以五大洲的25个国家为组、性别和年龄为组以及对新冠病毒感染的不同关注阶段进行的多组验证性因素分析中，发现CAS在所有组中都是不变的；这表明CAS适合于有意义地比较不同组的结果。在全球范围内，女性和男性参与者的冠状病毒焦虑没有差异。然而，就年龄而言，年轻人受疫情焦虑的影响更大。个人主义文化以及西方半球权力距离较低的文化中，新冠病毒焦虑程度较高。对于那些感染过新冠病毒的人、其亲属感染过新冠病毒的人以及家中经历过与新冠病毒相关死亡的人，CAS值也更高。总体而言，CAS在全球范围内是一种简洁、有效且可靠的心理健康筛查工具。
