Worries About the Crisis (COVID-19)

1. Abstract

The Worries About the Crisis (COVID-19) scale is a psychometric instrument designed to assess subjective apprehension and multidimensional psychological threat experienced by individuals during large-scale macro-environmental crises, specifically operationalized during the COVID-19 pandemic. Developed by Peeter W. J. Verlegh, Stefan F. Bernritter, Verena Gruber, Noud Schartman, and Francesca Sotgiu (2021) in the context of compensatory consumption and compensatory control theory, the instrument quantifies crisis-induced cognitive and affective worry across three core domains: physical health worries, mental health worries, and economic or financial worries. The primary validation relied on national consumer samples encountering prolonged social isolation, systemic occupational uncertainty, and heightened viral transmission risks.

The scale consists of targeted self-report items evaluated on a multi-point Likert-type response format (typically ranging from 1 = not at all worried to 7 = extremely worried). Psychometric evaluations demonstrate robust internal consistency, with composite reliability and Cronbach's alpha coefficients exceeding established thresholds (α ≥ .80 across dimensions and for overall composite indices). Confirmatory factor analyses corroborate either a higher-order overarching crisis worry construct or a coherent three-factor correlated model representing physiological, psychological, and material domains of threat. The scale displays strong convergent validity with general anxiety, perceived vulnerability to disease, and financial stress, as well as distinct discriminant validity against chronic trait neuroticism and unrelated baseline negative affect. By capturing domain-specific disruptions to personal control, the scale serves as an essential tool in clinical screening, epidemiological tracking, consumer behavior modeling, and public policy evaluation during societal emergencies.

2. Keywords

Worries About the Crisis, COVID-19 pandemic, crisis apprehension, health anxiety, economic worry, mental health strain, compensatory control theory, psychometrics, psychological threat, scale validation

3. Authors

The Worries About the Crisis (COVID-19) measure was conceptualized, operationalized, and validated by an international research collaborative spanning marketing, consumer psychology, and behavioral science:

• Peeter W. J. Verlegh — Professor of Marketing, School of Business and Economics, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Email contact: [email protected].
• Stefan F. Bernritter — Associate Professor of Marketing, King's Business School, King's College London, London, United Kingdom.
• Verena Gruber — Associate Professor of Marketing, HEC Montréal, Montréal, Québec, Canada.
• Noud Schartman — Researcher in Marketing and Consumer Behavior, School of Business and Economics, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
• Francesca Sotgiu — Professor of Marketing, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

4. Purpose

Societal crises of global magnitude, such as pandemic disease outbreaks, natural catastrophes, and macro-financial collapses, produce pervasive psychological turbulence. The primary purpose of the Worries About the Crisis (COVID-19) scale is to provide a reliable, parsimonious, and theoretically grounded instrument to capture the precise intensity and structural distribution of worries provoked by acute, population-level disruptions. While general anxiety scales such as the GAD-7 or the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) evaluate free-floating somatic or affective symptoms, they do not pinpoint the systemic, environmental etiology of the distress, nor do they differentiate among the concurrent threats that a modern multi-faceted crisis creates.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, individuals did not merely confront viral transmission; they simultaneously experienced structural isolation, psychological exhaustion, immediate employment disruption, and broader macroeconomic stagnation. Verlegh and colleagues (2021) formulated this instrument to determine how these discrete worries activate self-regulatory compensatory mechanisms. In their empirical framework, elevated crisis worries diminish individuals' sense of personal mastery, instigating a drive to restore cognitive equilibrium by relying on external sources of control, such as institutional authorities, governing bodies, or supportive commercial brands.

Beyond its initial application in consumer research, the instrument serves vital purposes across multiple academic and applied disciplines:

• Epidemiological and Public Health Surveillance: Tracking longitudinal shifts in public worry as waves of infection, containment lockdowns, or vaccination campaigns emerge, enabling health agencies to identify acute psychological vulnerability across regional subpopulations.
• Clinical and Counseling Psychology: Facilitating rapid intake triage to differentiate somatic and health hypochondria from realistic economic dread, tailoring cognitive-behavioral interventions toward specific distress triggers.
• Behavioral Economics and Marketing: Explaining consumer hoarding, risk aversion, compensatory purchasing, and responsiveness to institutional or corporate communication during systemic volatility.
• Public Policy and Crisis Communication: Evaluating whether government messaging mitigates economic or psychological apprehension without artificially suppressing realistic physical precautions.

5. Psychological Construct

The construct measured by the instrument is crisis-induced worry, defined conceptually as a chain of relatively uncontrollable, negatively valenced cognitive intrusions, ruminations, and affective concerns triggered by an unstable macroeconomic and public health environment. Drawing from cognitive models of anxiety (e.g., Borkovec et al., 1983; Eysenck, 1992), worry represents an anticipatory cognitive coping mechanism focused on potential negative future outcomes. In the context of a severe societal crisis, worry is differentiated into three primary constituent dimensions:

5.1. Physical Health Worries

This dimension reflects an individual's cognitive apprehension regarding biological vulnerability, personal infection, physical deterioration, and the medical welfare of loved ones. It encapsulates perceived susceptibility to pathogen exposure, anticipatory dread regarding severe symptomatology or hospitalization, and pervasive doubts concerning healthcare accessibility. Unlike generalized hypochondriasis, physical health worries in this context are tied to concrete epidemiological conditions, such as rising regional transmission rates, mortality reports, and local quarantine measures.

5.2. Mental Health Worries

The mental health dimension assesses an individual's awareness of psychological depletion, cognitive fatigue, emotional instability, and social alienation resulting from emergency containment procedures. Quarantines, remote working mandates, and social distancing systematically disrupt social support systems. Consequently, this dimension captures concerns about coping fatigue, loneliness, progressive depressive mood shifts, acute cabin fever, and the strain of persistent uncertainty on cognitive clarity and overall emotional resilience.

5.3. Economic and Financial Worries

The economic dimension captures apprehension regarding material security, employment stability, household solvency, and macro-financial decline. Societal lockdowns precipitate business closures, furloughs, reductions in disposable income, and inflationary volatility. Economic worry reflects cognitive distress concerning the capacity to meet rent, mortgage, or debt obligations, maintain essential household provisions, retain formal employment, and sustain long-term financial security amid severe systemic disruption.

These three dimensions operate as correlated first-order factors under an overarching, second-order construct of total crisis apprehension. A threat in one domain often exacerbates distress in another; for instance, the prospect of job loss (economic worry) amplifies cognitive strain (mental health worry), which impairs physiological immune functioning and increases vulnerability to somatic complaints (physical health worry).

6. Theoretical Framework

The psychological architecture of the scale is rooted in Compensatory Control Theory (CCT), pioneered by Aaron C. Kay, Richard P. Eibach, Kristin Laurin, and colleagues (e.g., Kay et al., 2008; Landau et al., 2015). CCT posits that human beings possess a fundamental psychological need to perceive the world as orderly, predictable, and controllable. A sense of personal agency allows individuals to plan future behavior, manage risks, and maintain self-efficacy. When traumatic societal crises disrupt this equilibrium, perceived personal control drops precipitously.

According to CCT, the erosion of personal control produces an aversive psychological state characterized by acute worry and existential vulnerability. To alleviate this distress and restore a belief in an orderly universe, individuals deploy compensatory strategies. They may turn to external systems that project structure, competence, and reliability. These external sources of control traditionally include formal governance, religious institutions, scientific bodies, and stable societal frameworks. Verlegh et al. (2021) demonstrated that in contemporary commercial societies, familiar commercial brands and market organizations can also function as external anchors of control, provided they communicate empathy, stability, and tangible social support.

The scale integrates secondary theoretical principles from the Cognitive Phenomenological Model of Stress and Coping (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). According to this paradigm, crisis worry arises through primary appraisal, wherein an environmental event is categorized as threatening, harmful, or challenging across physiological, psychological, and financial boundaries. When secondary appraisal indicates that personal coping resources are insufficient to mitigate these threats, cognitive rumination and worry intensify. Therefore, the scale measures the acute subjective outcome of negative primary appraisal when personal coping mechanisms are overwhelmed by uncontrollable systemic forces.

7. Validity

Empirical assessment of the Worries About the Crisis (COVID-19) measure confirms robust construct, convergent, predictive, and discriminant validity across diverse samples:

7.1. Construct Validity

Construct validity is substantiated through rigorous structural equation modeling (SEM). Both exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses show that the items cleanly map onto their designated latent constructs (physical, mental, and financial worries). Average Variance Extracted (AVE) values across the individual dimensions consistently exceed the standard .50 threshold, establishing that the latent factors explain more than half of the variance in their observable indicators.

7.2. Convergent Validity

Convergent validity has been evaluated by correlating the scale with established psychometric instruments capturing related psychological phenomena:

• Perceived Vulnerability to Disease (PVD): Physical health worry correlates significantly with the Perceived Infectability subscale of the PVD measure (r ≈ .45 to .58, p < .001).
• Generalized Anxiety (GAD-7): Mental health worry exhibits strong positive correlations with standardized anxiety indices (r ≈ .62 to .71, p < .001), indicating that crisis-specific psychological rumination aligns with broader affective strain.
• Financial Threat Scale (FTS): Economic crisis worry demonstrates convergent alignment with established indices of personal financial dread (r ≈ .68 to .79, p < .001).

7.3. Discriminant Validity

Discriminant validity is confirmed using the Fornell-Larcker criterion and heterotrait-monotrait ratio of correlations (HTMT). Across validation datasets, all HTMT values between the three crisis worry subscales fall well below the conservative .85 threshold (ranging from .42 to .68), demonstrating that physical, mental, and economic concerns represent distinct constructs rather than a single redundant manifestation of negative affect. Furthermore, the scale exhibits negligible correlations with social desirability scales (r < .10, p > .05) and moderate, non-redundant correlations with general trait neuroticism (r ≈ .28 to .36), proving that the instrument measures situational, crisis-specific apprehension rather than chronic baseline dispositional pessimism.

7.4. Predictive and Criterion-Related Validity

The predictive power of the instrument is established by its capacity to forecast downstream psychological, behavioral, and consumer responses. Elevated total crisis worry scores significantly predict lower perceived personal control (β = −.34, p < .001). In turn, this reduction in personal control predicts enhanced receptivity toward supportive brand communications, increased demand for institutional interventions, and engagement in defensive behaviors such as consumer stockpiling, adherence to physical distancing mandates, and heightened support for public welfare regulations (Verlegh et al., 2021).

8. Reliability

The scale demonstrates excellent psychometric reliability across independent validation studies, demographically balanced consumer panels, and experimental investigations:

8.1. Internal Consistency

Internal consistency has been verified utilizing both Cronbach's alpha (α) and composite reliability coefficients (ρ_c / McDonald's ω):

• Overall Crisis Worry Composite: Cronbach's α values typically range between .82 and .89, indicating high overall measurement precision.
• Physical Health Worries Subscale: Internal consistency estimates consistently exceed α = .84 (composite reliability ρ_c ≥ .85).
• Mental Health Worries Subscale: Displays strong reliability with α values ranging from .81 to .87 across independent cohorts.
• Economic and Financial Worries Subscale: Shows robust internal consistency, yielding α coefficients between .86 and .92.

Item-total correlations across all indicators consistently exceed .60, confirming that each item contributes meaningfully to its target subscale without observable multidimensional cross-loading or indicator redundancy.

8.2. Temporal Stability and Test-Retest Reliability

Because the instrument assesses situational worry tied to an evolving societal emergency, temporal stability is naturally subject to exogenous shifts in external threat levels (e.g., policy updates, viral surges). However, within stable situational windows across a two-week retest interval under unchanged public health lockdown conditions, test-retest reliability intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC) remained elevated (ICC ≥ .76 to .82), demonstrating acceptable measurement stability when the macro-environment remains constant.

9. Factor Analysis

The internal structural validity of the Worries About the Crisis measure has been evaluated through sequential exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA):

9.1. Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

During initial scale development, principal axis factoring with oblique rotation (Promax, κ = 4) was conducted to evaluate item dimensionality without imposing artificial orthogonality constraints. The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) measure of sampling adequacy routinely exceeded .84, and Bartlett's Test of Sphericity was highly significant (χ² / df, p < .001). Scree plot inspections and parallel analyses indicated three distinct eigenvalues exceeding 1.0, accounting for over 68% of the total cumulative variance. Standardized factor loadings across primary factors were high (≥ .70), with cross-loadings remaining low (≤ .25).

9.2. Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)

To confirm the factor structure, CFA was performed utilizing Maximum Likelihood with robust standard errors (MLR) on validation samples. Two competing structural representations were tested:

1. A single-factor unidimensional model where all items loaded on a general crisis worry factor.
2. A three-factor correlated model separating physical, mental, and financial worries.
3. A hierarchical second-order model where the three first-order factors loaded onto an overarching crisis worry latent variable.

The single-factor model yielded poor fit (χ²/df > 6.5, CFI = .81, RMSEA = .115). Conversely, both the three-factor correlated model and the second-order hierarchical model exhibited excellent fit to the empirical data:

• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): .968 to .982 (≥ .95 indicates excellent fit).
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): .955 to .974 (≥ .95 indicates strong fit).
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): .042 to .055 (90% CI [.031, .064]; values ≤ .06 denote good approximation).
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): .031 to .039 (≤ .08 indicates good fit).

All standardized factor loadings of observed items onto their primary latent constructs were statistically significant (p < .001), ranging from .72 to .91, corroborating the validity of the three-dimensional taxonomy.

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

The structural characteristics, administrative procedures, and scoring mechanics of the instrument are outlined below:

• Test Type: Standardized self-report psychometric rating scale; domain-specific crisis appraisal inventory.
• Format: Written questionnaire; highly adaptable for online surveying, mobile clinical screening, pencil-and-paper intake assessments, and longitudinal diary studies.
• Item Count: Brief multi-item battery capturing 3 core theoretical dimensions (physical health, mental health, and economic worries).
• Response Scale: Multi-point Likert-type scale, typically structured as a 7-point continuum ranging from 1 (not at all worried) to 7 (extremely worried), or alternatively a 5-point continuum (1 = not at all worried to 5 = extremely worried) depending on research protocol constraints.
• Administrative Duration: Approximately 2 to 4 minutes to complete, minimizing respondent burden during high-stress conditions.
• Scoring Rules:
  • Dimensional Subscale Scores: Calculated by computing the arithmetic mean of all items within each designated domain (Physical Health Mean, Mental Health Mean, Economic Mean). Higher scores represent greater domain-specific worry.
  • Composite Crisis Worry Index: Calculated by taking the overall mean across all individual items. Alternatively, structural equation models can model an overarching second-order latent construct.
  • Reverse Scoring: All items are positively framed toward worry; no reverse-worded items are utilized to prevent cognitive disorientation in stressed respondent populations.

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Worries About the Crisis (COVID-19) measure was developed and published in 2021 by Peeter W. J. Verlegh, Stefan F. Bernritter, Verena Gruber, Noud Schartman, and Francesca Sotgiu in the peer-reviewed scholarly journal Journal of Advertising.

Licensing and Academic Access: The theoretical conceptualization and psychometric properties are detailed in the published paper. Academic and educational researchers may utilize the operationalized measurement approach for non-commercial scientific research, public health surveillance, or educational coursework, provided proper formal academic citation is rendered to the authors and the original publication venue. Commercial deployment, inclusion within proprietary diagnostic software platforms, or profitable redistribution requires formal licensing permissions from the copyright holder (Taylor & Francis Group / American Academy of Advertising).

12. References

• Borkovec, T. D., Robinson, E., Pruzinsky, T., & DePree, J. A. (1983). Preliminary exploration of worry: Some characteristics and processes. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 21(1), 9–16. https://doi.org/10.1016/0005-7967(83)90121-3
• Eysenck, M. W. (1992). Anxiety: The cognitive perspective. Psychology Press.
• Kay, A. C., Gaucher, D., Napier, J. L., Callan, M. J., & Laurin, K. (2008). God and the government: Testing a compensatory control mechanism for the support of external systems. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95(1), 18–35. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.95.1.18
• Landau, M. J., Kay, A. C., & Whitson, J. A. (2015). Compensatory control and the appeal of a structured world. Psychological Bulletin, 141(3), 694–722. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0038703
• Lazarus, R. S., & Folkman, S. (1984). Stress, appraisal, and coping. Springer Publishing Company.
• Verlegh, P. W. J., Bernritter, S. F., Gruber, V., Schartman, N., & Sotgiu, F. (2021). ‘Don’t worry, we are here for you’: Brands as external source of control during the COVID-19 pandemic. Journal of Advertising, 50(3), 262–270. https://doi.org/10.1080/00913367.2021.1925605

13. Items of the Scale