Validation of the COVID-19 Fear Scale for Community Health Agents

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic defined a new social dynamic, due to the intensification of feelings of fear, especially the fear of getting infected and of infecting loved ones, which imposed new challenges upon Primary Health Care (PHC) system and the work of the Community Health Agent (CHA) program, highlighting the need for an instrument to assess fear and its impacts on the physical-emotional aspects and on the work reality of these professionals. Thus, the objective of this study was to develop and validate a scale for assessing the fear of COVID-19 among CHAs. This methodological study was developed with the CHAs of the northern Minas Gerais health macro-region, from July to October 2020. The elaboration of the items was carried out by the authors based on constructs of feelings of fear and the anxiety and fear assessment scales identified in the literature. An exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis was performed in order to verify the validity of the constructed instrument. The scale showed satisfactory levels of adjustment in the analyses carried out, demonstrating adequacy of the data for the achievement of construct validity. Two indicators refuted the one-dimensionality of the scale. The elaborated and validated scale will be able to subsidize the definition of strategies directed to the CHA program, in order to guide their work within the community, in addition to acting preventively in the identification of mental health problems in the context of a pandemic.

Keywords

• community health agent
• covid-19
• fear
• validation studies