Reliability of the hebrew version of the integrated covid-19 threat scale

Background: The COVID-19 global pandemic of 2020 brought about a surge of psychological research focusing on its cognitive and emotional impact. In a recent study, Kachanoff et al. (1) published the Integrated Covid-19 Threat Scale – a 10-item scale for measuring the perceived symbolic and realistic threats of COVID-19. In their study Kachanoff et al. examined the reliability of this scale on a total of 1,142 participants who were tested in three separate experiments at the beginning of the outbreak in the U.S. between March 19-28, 2020. Methods: We have translated this scale into Hebrew and adapted it to Israeli participants. This Hebrew version of the scale was conducted with 492 Israeli participants who were tested a month later, between April 11-19, 2020. Here we publish the Hebrew version of the scale and report its internal and external reliability. Results: Our findings show that the Hebrew version of the scale is internally reliable and also externally reliable when compared to the GAD-7 anxiety scale. Additionally, in our sample we found a lower perception of threat than the findings of Kachanoff et al. Surprisingly, we found no difference between people who are at risk for COVID-19 and people who are not at risk. Conclusions: We conclude that the Hebrew and adaption of the scale is reliable and could be used in COVID-19 related psychological research conducted among Hebrew speaking participants in Israel. We discuss potential interpretations of the differences in perception of threat between Israeli and American populations and provide a potential explanation for why there was no effect of risk on the perception of threat.