AbstractObjective The COVID-19 pandemic significantly impacted and continues to impact the health and well-being of Australian adults. However, there has been no instrument validated to comprehensively measure how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted adults in Australia across several domains (e.g. fear of COVID-19, attitudes towards vaccination, psychosocial impact of lockdowns).The current study conducted a rigorous psychometric process to develop and validate an instrument to measure the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia, the COVID-19 Impact Scale (CIS).Method Data was obtained from the Australian population. Participants (N = 563) aged between 19 and 91 years (M = 54.50, SD = 16.16) provided online responses between June, 2021 and May, 2022. The majority of participants were female (60.9%), employed either full-time (37.7%) or part-time (22.0%), and had completed an undergraduate degree or higher (70.1%). An initial pool of 30 items was developed based on a review of the literature and input from a panel of experts including psychologists, epidemiologists, and public health experts, among others. The study used network psychometrics to examine the psychometric properties of: (1) item score distributions; (2) item redundancy; (3) dimensionality; (4) model fit; (5) measurement invariance; (6) reliability; and (7) criterion validity.Results Following an evaluation of items for ceiling/floor effects and redundancy, the final CIS network model included eighteen nodes and displayed a three-dimensional structure. The three communities of "Fear" (consisting of three nodes; ω = 0.82), "Attitudes" (consisting of ten nodes; ω = 0.89), and "Ill-being" (consisting of five nodes; ω = 0.79) displayed adequate reliability. The evaluation of model fit indicated a good fit of the network model (RMSEA = 0.047; CFI =0.98).Conclusion The instrument is available to be used by Australian researchers and implemented to evaluate public policies, adapted for future pandemics, or used internationally.Keywords: Covid-19vaccinationmisinformationnetwork psychometricsvalidation studiesView correction statement:Correction Declaration of financial/other relationshipsGregory Zimet has served as an external advisory board member for Merck, Moderna, and Pfizer, and as a consultant to Merck. They also have received investigator-initiated research funding from Merck administered through Indiana University. The remaining authors declare no conflicts of interest. Peer reviewers on this manuscript have no relevant financial or other relationships to disclose.Author contributionsKym M. Mccormick: Formal analysis, Methodology, Software, Validation, Visualization, Writing (original draft, review and editing); Sneha Sethi: Conceptualization, Investigation, Writing – review & editing; Dandara Haag: Conceptualization, Investigation, Writing – review & editing; Davi M. Macedo: Conceptualization, Investigation, Writing – review & editing; Joanne Hedges: Conceptualization, Investigation, Writing – review & editing; Adrian Quintero: Conceptualization, Investigation, Writing – review & editing; Lisa Smithers: Conceptualization, Investigation, Writing – review & editing; Rachel Roberts: Conceptualization, Investigation, Writing – review & editing; Gregory Zimet: Conceptualization, Investigation, Writing – review & editing; Lisa Jamieson: Funding acquisition, Project administration, Resources, Supervision, Conceptualization, Investigation, Writing – review & editing; Pedro Henrique Ribeiro Santiago: Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Supervision, Validation, Visualization, Writing (original draft, review and editing).AcknowledgementsThe authors would like to extend their thanks to the curator of this data, Mr Sergio Chrisopoulos, for his support during this project. Mr Chrisopoulos is supported by the University of Adelaide.Data availability statementThe R syntax for the simulation study and the simulated data (including simulation findings and plots) can be found at https://osf.io/ahuv3/. The datasets generated and/or analyzed during the current study are not publicly available. We do not have permission from the University of Adelaide Human Research Ethics Committee to publicly release the NDTIS 2021 dataset in either identifiable or de-identified form. The datasets are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.Correction StatementThis article was originally published with errors, which have now been corrected in the online version. Please see Correction (http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03007995.2023.2257985).Additional informationFundingThis study was supported by the grant Strategic Research Support Scheme received by the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, the University of Adelaide.
