COVID-19 Pandemic Psychosocial Impact Scale: Scale Development and Reliability and Validity Study

Abstract

Background: The aim of this research is to develop a multidimensional scale that reveals the psychosocial impact of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on people with its dimensions. Methods: An item pool of 155 questions was created by examining the literature, and these items were turned into a questionnaire with 76 questions by taking expert opinions. During the pilot study, this questionnaire was applied to 335 people from the general population, who were reached with the snowball sampling model. The second phase of the study was carried out with a second new sample group consisting of 826 participants, and confirmatory factor analysis, mean explained variance and compound reliability, and Cronbach's alpha analyses were applied to the obtained data. The test-retest study of the scale was re-applied to the second sample group, reaching 826 participants with an interval of 3 weeks. Results: The explained variance value of the scale was 81.352%. As a result of confirmatory factor analysis, the factor loads of the items of the scale were between 0.59 and 0.91, and the relationships between the items and the latent variables were significant at the P < .01 level; fit criteria is excellent and acceptable; Cronbach's alpha coefficient was found to be between 0.897 and 0.957, and as a result of the test-retest, the reliability coefficients were found to be between 0.948 and 0.950. Conclusion: From the results obtained, it was accepted that all the reliability and validity indicators of the COVID-19 pandemic Psychosocial Impact Scale are high and can be used as a valid and reliable scale to measure the psychosocial effects of the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic process on individuals.