Investigating the Psychological and Behavioral Impacts of Fear of COVID-19 in Students: The Mediating Role of Intolerance of Uncertainty

In this study, relationship between FC-19 and PWB and FC-19 and SEOLE were examined when IU is the mediator and gender, age, class level, and perceived success were controlled.

Hypotheses for Models 1 and 2:
1. FC-19 negatively influences SEOLE.
2. IU mediates the relationship between FC-19 and SEOLE.
3. The mediating effect of IU is still significant when age, gender, class level, and perceived success are controlled.

Hypotheses for Models 3 and 4:
4. FC-19 negatively influences PWB.
5. IU mediates the relationship between FC-19 and PWB.
6. The mediating effect of IU is still significant when age, gender, class level, and perceived success are controlled.

The hypothesized mediation model (see Figure 1) was tested in a single model using a bootstrapping approach to assess the significance of the indirect effects at different levels of the moderator (Hayes, 2013). In the first and second models, FC-19 was the predictor variable, SEOLE was the outcome variable, and IU was the mediator. In the third and fourth models, FC-19 was the predictor variable, PWB was the outcome variable, and IU was the mediator variable. Demographic variables such as gender, age, class level, and perceived success were controlled in the analysis. The “PROCESS" macro, model 4, v4.2 (Hayes, 2015) in SPSS 25 with bias-corrected 95% confidence intervals (n = 5000) was used to assess the significance of the indirect effects.