A comparison of perceived effectiveness of preventive behaviors against COVID-19 between the public and medical experts: Not so different in means, but in distributions

Abstract

This brief report documents the results of a survey that measured the public’s and doctors’ perceived effectiveness of preventive behaviors against COVID-19, in Japan. Medical doctors ( n = 117) and the general public ( n = 1086) participated in our online survey. The results of the analysis of mean scores indicate that there were only slight differences in perceived effectiveness between the two groups, while the differences in distributions were remarkable. The results of Silverman’s test suggest the unimodality of doctors’ responses and multimodality of the public’s responses. Implications of the findings to combat the risk of infection are discussed.

Reasons for being unsure or unwilling regarding intention to take COVID-19 vaccine among Japanese people: A large cross-sectional national survey

“…[55] A similar result was observed in a study regarding the perceived effectiveness of preventive behaviors against COVID-19. [56] Furthermore, a previous study showed that the intention to wear a mask as a COVID-19 preventive measure was also associated with the perceived norm. [50] The relationship of psychological characteristics with COVID-19 vaccination intention was basically similar among the stratified four Groups, although their statistical significances were slight difference between them.…”

Recovering from the COVID-19 shock: the role of risk perception and perceived effectiveness of protective measures on travel intention during the pandemic

“…For example, prior studies have confirmed that risk, whether physical, psychological, or financial, has a negative impact on travel or revisit intention (An et al 2010 ; Nik Hashim et al 2019 ). Although recent studies have begun to focus on the perceived effectiveness of protective measures, most of these studies simply focus on comparing the effectiveness of different measures and none have yet studied their impact on travel intention (Nakayachi et al 2021 ).…”

“…Protective measures, such as sanitization and social distancing, significantly changed how people act during the pandemic. For example, Margraf et al ( 2021 ) and Nakayachi et al ( 2021 ) found that the perceived effectiveness of COVID-19 protective measures differs significantly between countries and between the public and medical experts. However, simply comparing the differences between perceived effectiveness is insufficient in explaining how these differences affect individual behavior during and after the pandemic.…”

Are more behavioral measures perceived as less effective against COVID-19?

“…We used the available data sets of a study by Nakayachi et al (2021), in which 1,086 Japanese adults evaluated the effectiveness of preventive behaviors designed to curb the spread of COVID-19. The results reported in the present article did not appear in the previous research.…”