Background Beliefs of an individual about health conditions can play an important role in contributing to their behavior concerning good and bad health practices. The aim of this study was to develop and assess a set of vaccination belief scales in relation to COVID-19 vaccines. Methods A cross-sectional study was conducted between July 2020 and January 2021 using a systematic random sampling of 425 adult outpatients at two hospitals in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. An instrument was designed based on the dimensional structure and wording of the health belief model (HBM), which was followed by the assessment of the instrument’s internal consistency and the construct validity. Results The 15-item instrument showed the content validity index (CVI) of scales reached a value of 1.0. Exploratory factor analysis was performed on the first sample (n = 170) and extracted 12 out of 15 draft items in a four-factor model (threat of disease, perceived benefits, perceived barriers, and cues to action) that accounted for 68.3% of the total variance. Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of 0.765 showed as satisfactory. Following this, the confirmatory factor analysis in the remaining sample (n = 255) found a good fit between a four-factor model and a theoretical model of HBM with acceptable values of fit indices. Conclusion Beliefs scales for COVID-19 vaccination have been determined to be valid and reliable. They can be a helpful instrument for health educators to use for assessing immunization beliefs of individuals and the public where there is the need to implement new vaccines, such as the COVID-19 vaccine, before they are used more widely across the community.

Objectives: We assessed the factors relating to the prevention of the Novel Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) for students at the University of Medicine and Pharmacy at Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Methods: A cross-sectional study was performed in February and March 2020. A 21 item self-administered questionnaire on the knowledge, attitude, and practices regarding COVID-19 was collected from students of the first to the sixth year using the strategy of simple random sampling. The aim was to establish factors that relate to practices using Odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence interval (95% CI) which were estimated by the logistic regression model, p-value <0.05 shows a significant difference. Results: Of the 551 students, 41.0% recorded responses indicating good practices toward prevention measures, while around half the students reported that they did not wash their hands for 20 full seconds (50.5%). The overall rate of good knowledge and positive attitude was 49.0% and 26.1%, respectively. When adjusted for all variables in the logistic regression model, a positive overall attitude was associated with good overall preventive practice; AOR = 1.72 (95% CI: 1.16 – 2.55). Furthermore, students mainly accessed information via social media and television (95.8% and 85.8%, respectively). Conclusions: There were only 41.0% recorded responses indicating good practices toward prevention measures. Besides, knowledge and attitudes about COVID-19 among students were inadequate. Further health education interventions should be focused to change bad hand-washing habits via mass media messages.

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