The Questionnaire "COVID-19 Vaccine Attitude Scale" (COVID-19 VAS): Development and Standardization

ABSTRACT

The paper presents the results of the study on development and standardization of the "COVID-19 Vaccine Attitude Scale" (COVID- 19 VAS) questionnaire. The study sample includes N = 1965 undergraduate, specialist and master students, of which N = 1592 (81%) are women and N = 373 (19%) are men aged 16 to 60 years, mean age M = 24.7, SD = 8.4, Me = 21.0. Study was conducted at Moscow State University of Psychology & Education (MSUPE). The questionnaire structure includes 5 scales identified by the method of exploratory factor analysis: Scale 1 "The benefits of vaccination against COVID-19 for an individual and society", Scale 2 "Fear of incidental effects of vaccination against COVID-19 and distrust of information about the vaccination safety", Scale 3 "Denial of the danger of coronavirus and hope for natural immunity", Scale 4 "Confidence in the serious negative consequences of the coronavirus vaccine" and Scale 5 "Disbelief in the proven international level effectiveness of Russian vaccines". The construct validity of the questionnaire was statistically proved. Confirmatory factor analysis verified satisfactory goodness-of-fit between the empirical data and the questionnaire structure. The scales are moderately intercorrelated, and the directions of the correlations correspond to the expected ones. The high internal reliability of all scales is statistically confirmed with the Cronbach's alpha coefficient. Satisfactory convergent validity of the corresponding scales of the "COVID-19 Vaccine Attitude Scale (COVID-19 VAS)" with natural science literacy, intelligence and fear of COVID-19 disease is also confirmed. All correlations are weak, but theoretically expected and explainable. The differential validity is statistically proved. Stanines are calculated. The COVID-19 VAS can be recommended for preparation, realization and evaluation of the effectiveness of educational activities on vaccine prevention against COVID-19 among university students.