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
The expansion of wars around the world fosters a macrosocial stress with mul-
tilevel 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 pro-
cess 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 rela-
tion 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
