Global validation of the Coronavirus Anxiety Scale (CAS)

The five-item Coronavirus Anxiety Scale (CAS) was found to be a useful and valid mental health screener. Participants in the respective surveys were mostly from single countries such as the US, Turkey, Mexico, or Brazil. However, a cross-cultural re-examination is lacking. This study fills this gap. In several multigroup confirmatory factor analyses with 25 countries from five continents as groups, sex and age as groups, and different stages of concern with COVID-19 infection, CAS was found to be invariant across all groups; this indicates that CAS is appropriate for meaningfully comparing the results across different groups. On a global basis, Coronavirus anxiety did not differ between female and male participants. Regarding age, however, younger individuals suffered more from anxiety of the pandemic. Individualistic cultures and those with low power distance such as in the Western hemisphere had higher COVID-19 anxiety. CAS values were also higher for those individuals who had been infected by COVID-19, those whose relatives had been infected, and those who experienced COVID-19-related death in the family. Overall, CAS is a parsimonious, valid, and reliable mental health screener on a global basis.