COVID-19-Related Stress Scale: Development and Initial Validation

Background The COVID-19 pandemic had an extensive impact on people’s personal and professional lives across the world. Psychologists, among other professionals, were required to suddenly work remotely via telehealth during a period of global uncertainty, illness and mortality, community anxiety and lockdowns. This drastically altered the psychology practice, with the effects on clients and professionals still not fully understood.Aim To develop and validate a COVID-19-Related Stress Scale to evaluate psychologists’ experiences relating to the pandemic. Methods The items of the COVID-19-Related Stress Scale were constructed based on an extensive qualitative report from the British Psychological Society, which identified key themes in psychologists’ pandemic experiences. Eight items were initially developed. To determine construct validity, exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was conducted, as well as tests for convergent and discriminant validity. Results The sample comprised 99 psychologists in Aotearoa, New Zealand. After corrected item-total correlation testing, five items with significant and strong factor loadings (0.60 to 0.74) and two items with acceptable corrected item-total correlation (0.54 to 0.56) were confirmed, resulting in a scale of seven items. Cronbach’s alpha for internal consistency was α = .83, supporting a single-factor model (COVID-related stress, CVRS). A moderate relationship was found between CVRS and stress and compassion fatigue, validating its utility as a measure of stress. In contrast, no relationship was seen with resilience as a discriminant construct.Conclusion The Covid-19-related stress scale shows robust psychometric properties, which usefully assessed the impact of COVID-19 among psychologists in NZ. Although the lockdown phase of the pandemic has since ended, this measure provides valuable insights into the retrospective experiences of healthcare professionals during the pandemic. It may be adapted for unexpected scenarios requiring remote therapy, such as pandemics and natural disasters. The effect of remote work and community stress on mental health professionals requires ongoing consideration, and we propose that the CVRS is a useful tool for this research.