Pandemic Uncertainty Measurement Scale

During the pandemic, a self-made scale was used to measure residents' uncertainty. The scale contains six questions (Table 2) that asks subjects about their perceptions of the spread of the pandemic and their own infection, as well as their perceptions of the future development of the pandemic. The Likert scale with 5 points was adopted for all questions (from 1 strongly disagreed to 5 strongly agreed). The higher the subjects' average score, the higher their perception of the risk of pandemic spread and infection, and the higher their pessimistic perception of the future development of the pandemic. In this study, the Cronbach's α score for this scale was 0.93.
The scores of uncertainty ranged from 1 to 5, and 3 points indicated that the uncertainty of the subjects was in the middle level. According to the distribution of subjects' uncertainty scores (Figure 1), we divided them into two groups: the medium-high group (with scores ≥3) and the low group (with scores <3). Finally, we obtained that there were 209 subjects in the medium-high group and 311 subjects in the low group, and there were significant differences in the scores of uncertainty between such two groups [t₍₅₂₈₎ = 29.93, p < 0.001].