Development and Validation of the War Worry Scale (WWS) in a Sample of Italian Young Adults: An Instrument to Assess Worry About War in Non-War-Torn Environments

Abstract

The expansion of wars around the world fosters a macrosocial stress with multilevel effects that also affect the mental health of populations not directly involved, in particular of evolutionary targets in delicate transition. The present study describes the process of development, validation, and evaluation of the psychometric properties of the War Worry Scale (WWS), an instrument that explores the psychological impact of war in contexts not directly involved and, in particular, in the target population of young Italian adults. The process of construct definition and item generation of the WWS is presented here and then verified in Study I, which, using a sample of 250 young adults (40.4% male and 59.6% female), describes the exploration of the factor structure of the instrument through exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and presents preliminary psychometric properties. An independent sample of 500 young adults (39.4% male; 60.6% female) was recruited for Study II, which describes the results of confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) supporting the second-order structure with two first-order dimensions, Worry about the Present (WWP) and Worry about the Future (WWF), composed of 10 items (5 per dimension). The internal consistency of the WWS, convergent, discriminant, and concurrent validity with other validated measures, and measurement invariance between males and females are further described. Finally, significant differences in the levels of Worry about War are found in relation to several sociodemographic variables, i.e., gender, occupational status, relationship status, and political orientation. Overall, the results of Studies I and II confirm the validity, robustness, and reliability of the War Worry Scale.