• Saritha Nair, Aparna Joshi, Sumit Aggarwal, Tulsi Adhikari, Nupur Mahajan, Vishal Diwan, A Stephen, K Rekha Devi, Bijaya Kumar Mishra, Girijesh Kumar Yadav, Rewa Kohli, Damodar Sahu, Bal Kishan Gulati, Saurabh Sharma, Jeetendra Yadav, Senthanro Ovung, Chetna Duggal, Moina Sharma, Sampada Dipak Bangar, Rushikesh Andhalkar, Pricilla B Rebecca, S Rani, Pradeep Selvaraj, Gladston G Xavier, Vanessa Peter, Basilea Watson, T Kannan, K S Md Asmathulla, Debdutta Bhattacharya, Jyotirmayee Turuk, Subrata Kumar Palo, Srikanta Kanungo, Ajit Kumar Behera, Ashok Kumar Pandey, Kamran Zaman, Brij Ranjan Misra, Niraj Kumar, Sthita Pragnya Behera, Rajeev Singh, Abu Hasan Sarkar, Kanwar Narain, Rajni Kant, Seema Sahay, Rajnarayan Ramshankar Tiwari, Beena Elizabeth Thomas, Samiran Panda, and M Vishnu Vardhana Rao.
• ICMR-National Institute of Medical Statistics, New Delhi, India.
• Indian J Med Res. 2022 Jan 1; 155 (1): 156164156-164.

Background & ObjectivesCOVID-19 pandemic has triggered social stigma towards individuals affected and their families. This study describes the process undertaken for the development and validation of scales to assess stigmatizing attitudes and experiences among COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 participants from the community.MethodsCOVID-19 Stigma Scale and Community COVID-19 Stigma Scale constituting 13 and six items, respectively, were developed based on review of literature and news reports, expert committee evaluation and participants' interviews through telephone for a multicentric study in India. For content validity, 61 (30 COVID-19-recovered and 31 non-COVID-19 participants from the community) were recruited. Test-retest reliability of the scales was assessed among 99 participants (41 COVID-19 recovered and 58 non-COVID-19). Participants were administered the scale at two-time points after a gap of 7-12 days. Cronbach's alpha, overall percentage agreement and kappa statistics were used to assess internal consistency and test-retest reliability.ResultsItems in the scales were relevant and comprehensible. Both the scales had Cronbach's α above 0.6 indicating moderate-to-good internal consistency. Test-retest reliability assessed using kappa statistics indicated that for the COVID-19 Stigma Scale, seven items had a moderate agreement (0.4-0.6). For the Community COVID-19 Stigma Scale, four items had a moderate agreement.Interpretation & ConclusionsValidity and reliability of the two stigma scales indicated that the scales were comprehensible and had moderate internal consistency. These scales could be used to assess COVID-19 stigma and help in the development of appropriate stigma reduction interventions for COVID-19 infected, and mitigation of stigmatizing attitudes in the community.

14 keywords...

hide…