Psychometric evaluation and item response theory analysis of the COVID Stress Scales in an older adult population
Bibliographic record
Abstract
OBJECTIVES: The COVID Stress Scales (CSS) represent a widely used self-report measure of stress and anxiety-related responses to COVID-19. Although the CSS have been validated across various nations and languages, their psychometric properties have not been assessed at the factor- or item-level with older adults. We aimed to psychometrically evaluate the CSS in older adults. METHOD: The CSS was examined with 486 North American older adults aged 65 years and older. Data were collected in January 2024 using Qualtrics Panels. Reliability was assessed using Cronbach's alpha and McDonald's omega coefficients, structural validity using confirmatory factor analysis, and discriminant validity using a social desirability measure. Item properties were examined using item response theory. RESULTS: The CSS demonstrated robust internal consistency and a defensible five- and six-factor structure, with the six-factor providing the most optimal model of measurement. All items adequately discriminated among respondents with varying levels of COVID-related stress. CONCLUSION: This study is first to demonstrate that the CSS functions as a reliable and valid tool for evaluating COVID-related stress among older adults, a necessary step for supporting its use in assessing mental health impacts of pandemics in a population at high risk of negative post-infection outcomes.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".