Italian adaptation and validation of FOWARS: a self-report instrument to assess the fear of war in Young Italian Adults

The Russia-Ukraine war, which began more than a year ago and is still ongoing, is generating tangible transformations in the economy and politics of Europe and around the world. As of now, there are very few tools aiming at investigating the psychological impact of war in territories which, though geographically distant from the war zone, are constantly exposed to its economic, political and socio psychological outcomes. Italy is one such example. The present study describes the Italian adaptation and validation of the Fear of War Scale (FOWARS), i.e., a 13-item Likert scale built by a Romanian research team (Kalcza-Janosi et al., 2022) aiming to explore the fear of war. For the Italian adaptation and valuation of its psychometrics properties, a sample of 150 young Italian adults (aged 18-35, M = 21.7; SD = 2.2) mainly coming from the Campania region (86%) has been collected. Exploratory Factor Analysis, carried out with PCA, confirmed the bifactorial structure of the scale accounting for 65% of the total variance, and detected two dimensions, i.e., the “Physiological dimension of fear” and the “Experiential dimension of fear”. Results of Confirmatory Factor Analysis show adequate goodness of fit scores (CFI =.95; GFI = .90; NFI = .92; CMIN/DF = 2.03; RMSEA = .08). The final version of the scale, consisting of 12 items, shows good internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha = .91; McDonald’s omega = .92). Further correlation analyses with the Worry Domains Questionnaire (WDQ), the Depression Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS-21) and the Satisfaction with life scale (SWLS) show a good convergent and discriminant validity of the Italian adaptation of FOWARS. Moreover, results from ANOVA show significant differences between men and women, the latter showing higher values of fear of war. However, occupational status and education were not statistically significant. In conclusion, the Italian version of FOWARS can be considered a reliable and valid instrument to assess the fear of war in young Italians and to measure the psychological impact of war in countries which are not involved directly.