Assessing COVID-19 Fear in Populations

The Fear of COVID-19 Scale (FCV-19S), developed by Ahorsu et al. [33 (link)], is a seven-item five-point scale that assesses fear of COVID-19 in the general population. This study used the Korean version translated by Seong et al. [34 (link)]. Each item is scored on a five-point scale where 1 stands for “never,” 2 for “rarely,” 3 for “moderately,” 4 for “often,” and 5 for “always.” The total score is the sum of the scores for each item and ranges from a minimum of seven points to a maximum of 35 points. A higher score indicates a higher fear of COVID-19. At the time of development, the internal consistency reliability of the scale was Cronbach’s α = 0.82; for the FCV-19S-K by Seong et al. [34 (link)], Cronbach’s α was 0.87, and for this study, Cronbach’s α was 0.92.