Validation and psychometric properties of the Farsi version of the fear of COVID‐19 scale among pregnant women

OBJECTIVE: The Covid‐19 epidemic, which has become the most challenging issue for health organizations and governments, has led to panic among people, especially pregnant women. The aim of this study was to investigate the psychometric properties of the Persian version of the Fear of COVID‐19 Scale (FCV‐19S) on a sample of Iranian pregnant women. METHODS: This cross‐sectional study was performed on 500 pregnant women referred to gynecology offices in Tehran. Construct validity was performed using exploratory (with maximum likelihood method and Promax rotation) and confirmatory factor analysis. Cronbach's alpha and McDonald omega coefficients were used to examine internal consistency. RESULTS: The mean age of the women was 28.98 (SD = 5.86) years. In exploratory factor analysis, two factors were extracted—emotional response and physiological response, which together explained 65.21% of the total variance of fear of Covid‐19. In the confirmatory factor analysis, the final model had a good fit: CMIN/df = 1.515, goodness of fit index (GFI) = 0.981, adjusted goodness of fit index (AGFI) = 0.956, normed fit index (NFI) = 0.979, Incremental Fit Index (IFI) = 0.993, comparative fit index (CFI) = 0.993, and root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) = 0.045 (95% CI: 0.001–0.085). Cronbach alpha and McDonald omega coefficients for the first factor were 0.874 and 0.878, and for the second factor were 0.853 and 0.854, respectively. CONCLUSION: The FCV‐19S in pregnant women has a good construct validity and can be used in various studies.