Development and Normalization of Emotion Regulation Strategies about Germophobia Questionnaire: A Pilot Study in Iranian Sample

Objective: The COVID-19 has recently identified as a pandemic by World Health Organization. The outbreak of the disease has caused many people around the world to become extremely frightened and they show phobic signs. Fear is basic emotion of anxiety disorders and individuals cope with their emotions by different strategies. The purpose of present study was to developing and normalizing of emotion-regulation strategies for germophobia questionnaire (ERS-GPQ). Methods: The participants were 99 individuals (74-female) of Iranian population that they had concerned about germs and selected with snowball sampling. They were completed the ERS-GPQ and GPQ in Google form platform. Results: The results illustrate that the ERS-GPQ has acceptable internal consistency with Cronbach’s alpha coefficient (a=0.61), reliability coefficients with split-half (0.70), and one-week test-retest (0.92); in addition, the ERS-GPQ has moderate positive correlation with contamination obsessions checklist of GPQ (r=0.44) as convergent coefficient; and finally the confirmatory factor analysis indicate 2 factors of the ERS-GPQ. Finally the ERS-GPQ has 2 components with good convergent and discriminate validities and composite reliability. Conclusion: Based on these findings, the ERS-GPQ has acceptable and good psychometric properties; researchers can utilize the ERS-GPQ as reliable and validate instrument for assessing the emotion-regulation strategies for germophobia and it has some considerations for practitioners in epidemic and pandemic crisis like COVID-19.