ABSTRACT
Abstract: Background: COVID 19 pandemic has led to psychological health issues one of which is fear. This study validates the Arabic version of the fear of COVID 19 scale and suggests a new cutoff score to measure fear of COVID 19 among the Syrian Population. Methods: A total of 3989 participants filled an online survey consisting of socio-demographic information, the fear of COVID 19 scale, the patient health questionnaire 9-item, and the generalized anxiety disorder 7 item. Receiver operating characteristic analysis was used to define cutoff scores for the fear of COVID 19 scale in relation to generalized anxiety disorder 7 item and the patient health questionnaire 9 item. Results: The Cronbach alpha value of the Arabic fear of COVID 19 scale was 0.896, revealing good stability and internal consistency. The inter-item correlations were between [0.420 and 0.868] and the corrected item-total correlations were between [0.614 and 0.768]. A cutoff point of 17.5 was deduced from analysis. According to the deduced cutoff point, 2111(52.9%) were classified as cases with extreme fear Conclusion: This cutoff score deduced from this study can be used for screening purposes to identify individuals that may be most vulnerable towards developing extreme fear of COVID 19. Therefore, early preventive and supportive measures can then be delivered.