The Fear of War Scale (FOWARS): Development and Initial Validation

Kinga Kalcza-Janosi (), Ibolya Kotta, Eszter Eniko Marschalko and Kinga Szabo
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Kinga Kalcza-Janosi: Applied Psychology Department, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Babeş-Bolyai University, 400084 Cluj-Napoca, Romania
Ibolya Kotta: Applied Psychology Department, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Babeş-Bolyai University, 400084 Cluj-Napoca, Romania
Eszter Eniko Marschalko: Applied Psychology Department, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Babeş-Bolyai University, 400084 Cluj-Napoca, Romania
Kinga Szabo: Applied Psychology Department, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Babeş-Bolyai University, 400084 Cluj-Napoca, Romania

Social Sciences, 2023, vol. 12, issue 5, 1-12

Abstract: The emergence of the Ukraine-Russia war in 2022 led to fear, worry and anxiety among individuals, mostly in the immediate neighboring countries of Ukraine. The purpose of the present study was to develop the fear of war scale (FOWARS), aiming to fill the gap in the literature that currently is scarce in valid assessment tools for measuring the fear of war. The sample of the study consisted of N = 1131 participants ( n = 670 for group A, for EFA and n = 461 for group B, for CFA). Hungarian speaking participants, mainly from Romania and Hungary. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) evinced a two-factor model of the newly developed scale, and the final version fulfilled the criteria of the confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). The 13-items FOWARS has robust psychometric properties and proves to be appropriate for a fear of war assessment in the general population. The phenomenon is measured by two factors, namely experiential and physiological dimensions of fear. The scale is available in the present paper in two languages: English and Hungarian.

Keywords: fear; war; experiential; physiological (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A B N P Y80 Z00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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