Knowledge and attitude towards COVID-19 in Bangladesh: Population-level estimation and a comparison of data obtained by phone and online survey methods

Abstract

Adherence of people to the guidelines and measures suggested in fighting the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is partly determined by the Knowledge, Attitude, and Practices (KAP) of the population. In this cross-sectional study, we primarily addressed two key issues. First, we tried to determine whether there is a significant difference in the estimated COVID-19 knowledge level from the online and phone survey methods. Second, we tried to quantify the knowledge and attitude of COVID-19 in Bangladeshi adult population. Data were collected through phone calls (April 14-23, 2020) and online survey (April 18-19, 2020) in Bangladesh. The questionnaire had 20 knowledge questions with each correct response getting one point and incorrect/do not know response getting no point (maximum total knowledge score 20). Participants scoring >17 were categorized as having good knowledge. The percentages of good knowledge holders were 57.6%, 75.1%, and 95.8% in the phone (n=1426), online non-medical (n=1097), and online medical participants (n=382), respectively. Comparison between phone and online survey showed that, overall, online survey might overestimate knowledge level than that of phone survey, although there was no difference for elderly, poor, and rural people. Male gender, higher education, living in town/urban areas, good financial condition, and use of internet were positively associated with good knowledge. However, higher knowledge was associated with having less confidence in the final control of COVID-19. Our adult population-level estimates showed that only 32.6% (95% CI 30.1-35.2%) had good knowledge. This study provides crucial information that could be useful for the researchers and policymakers to develop effective strategies.

Knowledge, attitudes, and fear of COVID-19 during the Rapid Rise Period in Bangladesh

“…Subjects with "good knowledge" or "high scores for fear" were more likely to believe that COVID-19 can be controlled and that a collective effort can contain the spread of the disease. Similar studies in Bangladesh, India, and China all found similar results regarding the relationship between knowledge and fear of COVID-19 regarding "practices", [16,25,30], and our study reported similarities to previous studies across the world [23,24]. Our study found that 37.5% of women reported "staying home", and 36.8% reported wearing masks in public places.…”

<p>Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practices Towards COVID-19 Pandemic Among Quarantined Adults in Tigrai Region, Ethiopia</p>

“…Despite the reason that more than 3/4 th (82.2%) of the total participants have completed primary school or above and it has been more than half a year since the declaration of the pandemic, only 142 [(42.9%) range 0-13 and mean 8.73±2.64] of the participants had an acceptable level of knowledge score regarding COVID-19. This finding is much lower than other studies [26][27][28][32][33][34][36][37][38][39][40][41] in different parts of the world. The reason might be due to inadequate access to information.…”

Knowledge, Attitude, and Practice and Associated Factors towards COVID-19 among College Students in Amhara Region, Ethiopia; A Cross-Sectional Study

“…The discrepancy might be due to differences in cut-values used to categorize the knowledge levels, sample size, and sociocultural various between study settings. However, this result is higher than a study conducted in Syrian residents (60%) [39], USA (58%) [40], Bangladesh (48.3%) (57.6%) (10%) [24,41,42], three Middle Eastern countries (66.1%) [43], Makerere University Teaching Hospitals (66%) [25], Pakistan (51.8%) [44]. The differences in level of knowledge have been subjected to variation in the cut-values (i.e.…”