Adaptation and Psychometrics of the Persian Version of the Social Stigma QuestionnaireR to the COVID-19

During COVID-19 pandemic, human society, especially the nurses who care for the patients of COVID-19, aside from the physical complications of this disease, have also faced its extensive mental devastations. One of the psychosocial consequences of contracting infectious diseases is social stigma. Due to the lack of appropriate tools to investigate the social stigma related to the COVID-19 crisis, this study was conducted with the aim of localization and psychometric analysis of the Persian version of the social stigma questionnaire related to the COVID-19 crisis.

This cross-sectional study was conducted in 1400, after back-and-forth translation of the existing social stigma questionnaire in studies in the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, face and content validity was measured by 12 members of the panel of experts in the field. To be valid and reliable, the questionnaire was presented to 242 nurses working in selected centers of COVID-19 by multi-stage random sampling. The validity of the content and structure of the questionnaire was done with confirmatory factor analysis and average CVR, and internal consistency with Cronbach's alpha coefficient.

The content validity index of CVR was calculated as 0.92 and the value of CVI as 0.98. Content and structural validity resulted in Persian version with 12 questions and 3 subscales with a variance of 72.86.

This study showed that the Farsi and adaptive version of the social stigma questionnaire has good validity and reliability and can be used as a valid and reliable tool to measure social stigma among nurses.