Turkish Validity and Reliability Study of the Fear of Coronavirus Disease-2019 Scale: A Research on Nursing Students

BACKGROUND/AIMS: The coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) outbreak has taken its toll on individuals' mental health and physical health worldwide. Nurses, who play a key role in patient care, experience greater fear and anxiety due to their high-risk exposure to COVID-19 infection. This also leads to anxiety among undergraduate nursing students. This study aimed to determine the validity and reliability of the "Fear of COVID-19 Scale (FCV-19S)" for Turkish nursing students.MATERIALS AND METHODS: The study was conducted with 351 nursing students from two different universities in Turkiye between May and June 2020. Participant characteristic form and the Turkish version of FCV-19S were utilized to gather the data. Psychometric tests including language validity, content validity, and reliability analyses were performed.RESULTS: The item total test correlation of all items varies between 0.537 and 0.637. The Explanatory Factor Analysis made to detect the factor design of the scale found the threshold factor loading value as 0.40. The scale's 7 items and single sub-dimension were related to the scale structure to to the Confirmatory Factor Analysis. The scale Cronbach's alpha value was determined as 0.833. The test-retest results, performed to determine the time invariance, revealed a high level of correlation between the two measurements with the Pearson correlation coefficient (r=0.734; p<0.05).CONCLUSION: A valid and reliable measurement tool was provided to Turkiye to assess nursing students' fears of COVID-19. The Turkish version of the scale can be utilized as a substantial and reliable estimation device in detecting the fear of coronavirus in nursing students.