Development and Initial Validation of the COVID-19 Anxiety Scale.

Background: Safeguarding the psychological well-being of the public is also an integral component of fighting COVID-19. However, there is limited availability of psychometric measures to document COVID-19-related anxiety among the general public.

Objectives: This study was aimed at developing a validated scale to measure COVID-19-related anxiety.

Methods: Three hundred and seven subjects from different gender, educational categories participated in the study. Exploratory factor analysis for the determination of factor structure, Pearson's correlation test, and Kruskal-Wallis ANOVA were employed in data analysis using SPSS version 20 software.

Results: COVID-19 Anxiety Scale (CAS) demonstrated a two-component structure identified as: "fear of social interaction;" "illness anxiety." The final scale with seven items demonstrated good internal consistency reliability (Cronbach's Alpha 0.736). CAS exhibited good construct validity showing moderately negative correlation (Pearson's r = -0.417) with the self-rated mental health and resulted in higher scores among individuals with lower educational qualification (Kruskal-Wallis ANOVA χ [2, 303] = 38.01; P = 0.001).

Conclusion: CAS is a rapidly administrable, valid, and reliable tool that can be used to measure COVID-19-related anxiety among the Indian population.