The Psychometric Properties of the COVID Stress Scales in Korean University Students

The COVID-19 pandemic and its associated disruptions have significantly impacted university students’ lives worldwide. The COVID Stress Scale (CSS) is a 36-item self-reporting instrument designed to measure stress caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. This study purposed to examine the psychometric properties of the Korean version of the CSS for use with Korean university students. The study sample comprised 402 undergraduate students enrolled in a four-year private university in central South Korea. This cross-sectional investigation employed an anonymous online survey conducted during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. The forward-backward translation method was adopted to convert the original English version of the CSS to Korean. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was performed to determine the structure of the CSS. Convergent validity was assessed using correlation analysis with the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS). McDonald’s omega and Cronbach’s alpha reliability coefficients were used to evaluate reliability. The results revealed that a bifactor model specifying general factors and the six specific factors of danger, contamination, socioeconomic characteristics, xenophobia, traumatic stress symptoms, and compulsive checking and reassurance seeking provided the best fit among all alternatives. Further investigations demonstrated that the general factor of COVID-19-related stress accounted for the majority of CSS variances than the six specific factors. The results highlighted the unidimensionality of the measure. Additionally, the actions displayed excellent internal consistency. Our findings endorse the use of the Korean version of the CSS as a tool for measureing general stress experienced in reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic and we support using the instrument’s total score in this context.