| dc.description.abstract | Coronavirus Anxiety Scale (CAS) is a widely used measure that captures somatic symptoms of coronavirusrelated
anxiety. In a large-scale collaboration spanning 60 countries (Ntotal = 21,513), we examined the
CAS’s measurement invariance and assessed the convergent validity of CAS scores in relation to the fear of
COVID-19 (FCV-19S) and the satisfaction with life (SWLS-3) scales. We utilized both conventional exact
invariance tests and alignment procedures, with results revealing that the single-factor model fit the data well
in almost all countries. Partial scalar invariance was supported in a subset of 56 countries. To ensure the
robustness of results, given the unbalanced samples, we employed resampling techniques both with and
without replacement and found the results were more stable in larger samples. The alignment procedure
demonstrated a high degree of measurement invariance with 9% of the parameters exhibiting noninvariance.
We also conducted simulations of alignment using the parameters estimated in the current model. Findings
demonstrated reliability of the means but indicated challenges in estimating the latent variances. Strong
positive correlations between CAS and FCV-19S estimated with all three different approaches were found
in most countries. Correlations of CAS and SWLS-3 were weak and negative but significantly differed from
zero in several countries. Overall, the study provided support for the measurement invariance of the CAS
and offered evidence of its convergent validity while also highlighting issues with variance estimation. | en_US |
