The Covid-19 Vaccine Anxiety Scale Teen Version: A Mental health screen for Covid-19 Vaccine-Related Anxiety among Teenagers in Egypt

Introduction: The Covid-19 pandemic has had huge effects on the physical life and psychological health of people worldwide. Not only have adults been affected, but children and adolescents have also suffered. The hope of a return to normal life was raised with the development of vaccines, but misinformation and insufficient knowledge of authentic science about the effectiveness and safety of the vaccines have created another psychological phenomenon, namely, anxiety over the vaccinations themselves. Children are more likely to be affected by such fears and anxieties. To address this problem, a unique scale was developed to measure anxiety among teenagers regarding Covid-19 vaccines, and the scale’s psychometrics (validity and reliability) were evaluated.

Methods: The Scale items were developed, and after arriving at 30 total items, item pooling and division of the items into five subscales was performed. These subscales measure Emotional, Cognitive, Physiological, Behavioral, and Emotion Regulation dimensions. Data was collected from 1296 participants with an age range of 12--18. To check the psychometrics of the scale, Exploratory Factor Analysis, Variance, Rotated Factor Matrix, Construct Reliability and Validity, and Confirmatory Factor Analysis were performed.

Results: For the five dimensions that were developed, the Cronbach's alpha reliability coefficients were as follows: Emotional Dimension, 0.797; Cognitive Dimension, 0.857; Physiological Dimension, 0.951; Behavioral Dimension, 0.769; and Emotion Regulation, 0.900.

Conclusions: The developed scale is reliable and valid for measuring vaccination anxiety among teens. Future research should follow up on this study with a more expansive population worldwide.