Journal Article

Systematic Review of Scales for Measuring Infectious Disease–Related Stigma

Cheyne, Ashleigh, Stolow, Jeni, Jones, Benjamin, Rojek, Amanda, Paterson, Amy, Schilling, Stefan, Moses, Lina, Olliaro, Piero, Sigfrid, Louise

2024

Overview

Infectious disease outbreaks are associated with substantial stigma, which can have negative effects on affected persons and communities and on outbreak control. Thus, measuring stigma in a standardized and validated manner early in an outbreak is critical to disease control. We reviewed existing scales used to assess stigma during outbreaks. Our findings show that many different scales have been developed, but few have been used more than once, have been adequately validated, or have been tested in different disease and geographic contexts. We found that scales were usually developed too slowly to be informative early during an outbreak and were published a median of 2 years after the first case of an outbreak. A rigorously developed, transferable stigma scale is needed to assess and direct responses to stigma during infectious disease outbreaks.

• Publisher: U.S. National Center for Infectious Diseases,Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
• Subject: Communicable diseases / Communicable Diseases - diagnosis / Communicable Diseases - epidemiology / Community / COVID-19 / COVID-19 vaccines / Development and progression / Disease control / Disease Outbreaks / Disease prevention / Ebola virus / Epidemics / Evaluation / Health surveys / HIV/AIDS and other retroviruses / Humans / Immunization / Infectious diseases / Outbreaks / Post traumatic stress disorder / Prejudice / Psychological aspects / Public health / Quantitative psychology / Social aspects / Social Stigma / Stigma / Stigma (Social psychology) / Surveys / Systematic review / Systematic Review of Scales for Measuring Infectious Disease–Related Stigma / United Kingdom