Conspiracy Beliefs Are Associated with Lower Knowledge and Higher Anxiety Levels Regarding COVID-19 among Students at the University of Jordan

Abstract

<jats:p>The world has been afflicted heavily by the burden of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) that overwhelmed health care systems and caused severe economic and educational deficits, in addition to anxiety among the public. The main aim of this study was to evaluate the mutual effects of belief that the pandemic was the result of a conspiracy on knowledge and anxiety levels among students at the University of Jordan (UJ). An electronic-based survey was conducted between 29 March, 2020 and 31 March, 2020. The targeted population involved all undergraduate and postgraduate students from the health, scientific and humanities schools at UJ. Survey sections included 26 items on: socio-demographic information, knowledge and sources of information about the disease, attitude towards the false notion that COVID-19 stemmed from a conspiracy and items to assess the anxiety level among students during the quarantine period. The total number of participants was 1540 students. The mean age of study participants was 22 years and females predominated the study population (n = 1145, 74.4%). The majority of participants perceived the disease as moderately dangerous (n = 1079, 70.1%). Males, Jordanians and participants with lower income were more inclined to feel that COVID-19 is very dangerous. A lower level of knowledge and a higher level of anxiety about COVID-19 were associated with the belief that the disease is part of a conspiracy. Females and participants with lower income were more likely to believe that the disease is related to conspiracy. Belief in conspiracy regarding the origin of COVID-19 was associated with misinformation about the availability of a vaccine and the therapeutic use of antibiotics for COVID-19 treatment. The Ministry of Health in Jordan was the most common source of information about COVID-19 reported by the participants (n = 1018). The false belief that COVID-19 was the result of a global conspiracy could be the consequence of a lower level of knowledge about the virus and could lead to a higher level of anxiety, which should be considered in the awareness tools of various media platforms about the current pandemic.</jats:p>

Does Physical Activity Matter for the Mental Health of University Students during the COVID-19 Pandemic?

“…The hypothesis that approximately one-third of the university student population suffered from various forms of depression and anxiety (from moderate to severe symptoms) was confirmed in this research regarding depression, but anxiety levels were lower than expected. The present result is consistent with the study of Feng et al [25] but differs from certain previous studies performed in the student population during the COVID-19 pandemic [18,20,21,28]. The prevalence of depression in the present study sample was 32%.…”

“…Among nursing students, the prevalence of moderate and severe anxiety (using the GAD-7) was 42.8% and 13.1%, respectively, during the third week of the national lockdown in Israel [28]. Sallam et al [21] found a mean anxiety score of 8.4 (assessed using GAD-7), with statistically significant higher scores among males (M = 7.7) compared to females (M = 8.6).…”

“…A review study indicated that, up to the time of its publishing, the prevalence of anxiety and depression ranged between 16-28% of the Chinese population during the COVID-19 pandemic [13]. Furthermore, it was found that women were at higher risk of coronavirus-related mental health disorders than men [16,[19][20][21][22][23]. Research also indicated that younger adults were at higher risk of anxiety, depression, and alcohol use than adults with an average age and above [6,9,10,19,22,23].…”

“…A growing body of literature has recently focused on examining mental health among undergraduates [18,20,21,[24][25][26][27][28][29]. Those studies suggest that university and college students experience higher rates of anxiety than it has been reported in other population groups [18,20,21,24,28]. However, a disparity in the prevalence of mental health disorders was also noted between particular studies, dependent on cross-cultural differences and the measurement methods used to assess anxiety and depression.…”

“…1. Based on previous research, we expected approximately one-third of university students to have suffered from various forms of depression and anxiety, experiencing moderate to severe symptoms [6,9,10,13,[16][17][18]20,21,25,52].…”