Health Behavior Toward COVID-19: The Role of Demographic Factors, Knowledge, and Attitude Among Chinese College Students During the Quarantine Period

Abstract

, an outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has occurred in Wuhan, China, and it has become a global pandemic currently. At the early stage, the Chinese government had adopted strict quarantine and hygiene measures, including disease detection and social distancing. Preventive behaviors, such as mask-wearing and hand-washing, had shown its importance in the control of the SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) and COVID-19 epidemic. 1-3 Previous studies suggest that individual's health behavior against disease was influenced by knowledge, 4 attitude, 5 and demographic factors. 6 This study investigated Chinese college students' health behavior toward COVID-19 during the quarantine period and identified its influencing factors. A cross-sectional questionnaire survey was conducted among Chinese college students between February 4, 2020, and February 21, 2020. The questionnaire consisted of 4 sections: (1) Demographic characteristics: gender, age, education level, major, residence, infection situation, contact situation, and parents' health condition. (2) Knowledge: included the general nature of virus, infection symptoms, and preventive measures (see Supplemental Table S1, available online). (3) Attitude: included perceived potential risk of infection and confidence on the final control of COVID-19 (see Supplemental Table S2, available online). (4) Health behavior: included hand-washing, mask-wearing, and social distancing. A 5-point Likert-type scale was used ranging from never to always. This study was approved by the Institution Review Board of Wuhan University (Approval Number: 2020YF0026). Informed consent was obtained from all participants. Among 1599 participants, 290 (18.14%) were living in Hubei Province, 902 (56.41%) were female, and 766 (47.90%) majored in medicine (Table 1). The mean knowledge score among participants was 8.63 (SD = 1.32, range = 0-10), and the mean attitude score was 22.51 (SD = 2.59, range = 6-30). Most college students reported a good health behavior in mask-wearing (94.06%), handwashing (91.13%), and social distancing (89.49%) during the epidemic. Results of binary logistic regression analysis on the influencing factors of health behavior are presented in Table 2. Gender, knowledge, and attitude toward COVID-19 were significantly associated with hand-washing. The odds ratio of female students was 1.93 times higher compared with

Knowledge, Perceived Beliefs, and Preventive Behaviors Related to COVID-19 Among Chinese Older Adults: Cross-Sectional Web-Based Survey

“…Studies have investigated behavioral responses toward COVID-19 among the general population [ 34 , 35 ] and in specific populations such as health care workers [ 36 ] and college students [ 37 , 38 ]; however, literature reports focusing on behavior changes in older people remain scant in spite of the detection of increased vulnerability among this population. Therefore, this paper aims to assess the knowledge, perceived beliefs, and preventive behaviors of older Chinese residents toward COVID-19 and to explore the knowledge, perceived beliefs, and other relevant factors that influence behavior changes.…”

Conceptualization of college students’ COVID-19 related mask-wearing behaviors using the Multi-Theory Model of health behavior change

“…Emergent research from China indicates that college students (n = 1599) are highly compliant (94.1%) with mask-wearing behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic. 28 In the Chinese study, mask-wearing was significantly associated with gender, parents’ health status, and individual attitude. Related to the generalizability of the Chinese study, the data came from researchers in Wuhan University (i.e.…”

Temporal Geospatial Analysis of COVID-19 Pre-infection Determinants of Risk in South Carolina

“…42,43 In addition, women were found to have a more responsible attitude of health behaviors towards COVID-19 than men. 18,44 Higher unemployment rate reflects a higher socio-economic vulnerability of COVID-19 infection. People with the ability to work from home have been proven to be less likely infected with COVID-19 because of higher job security.…”

“…17 Another study reported that the behaviors of wearing masks and using hand hygiene are associated with female gender and higher education level among students in Chinese population. 18 In a primary care cohort, researchers observed a higher risk of COVID-19 infection among people aged 40-64 years, in the male gender, black race, and living in urban areas. 14 Incorporating census tract level data with the COVID-19 dataset, Hawkins and colleagues examined the association between socioeconomic status variables and COVID-19 cases at the county level across the US and found a lower education level and higher percentage of black residents to be risk factors for the infection.…”

“…13 Therefore, it is equivalently important to curate an evidence base for disparities in the risk of exposure to COVID-19 and the pre-infection determinants of risk (PIDRs) (e.g., demographics, socioeconomic, and prevalence of diseases related to COVID-19 infection). [14][15][16][17][18][19] Such an evidence base can be used for understanding disease transmission patterns, identifying vulnerable populations, and proactively mitigating disparities in future pandemics. 20 Existing studies have reported demographic and socioeconomic factors to be related to disparities in the risk of exposure to COVID-19.…”