Knowledge, attitude and practice of secondary school students toward COVID-19 epidemic in Italy: a cross selectional study

  1. Dafni Souli
  2. Maddalena Dilucca

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Abstract

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is a highly transmittable and pathogenic viral infection caused by Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), which emerges in December 2019 in Wuhan, China and spreads around the world at the beginning of 2020. The World Health Organization declares the outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern on the 30th of January, and a pandemic on the 11th of March. On the 4th of March, the Italian government orders the full closure of all schools and universities nationwide.

The aim of this study is to investigate the knowledge, practice and attitudes (KAP) of secondary school at the time of COVID-19 pandemic in Italy. In this cross-sectional, web-based survey, conducted among the high school student population with age ranging from 14 to 19 years old, a questionnaire with 19 items regarding the KAP toward COVID-19 is asked. Study participants are recruited from several secondary schools of different areas. Frequencies and histograms are computed for descriptive purposes. Statistical analysis is computed with Chi square test, utilized to depict relevant difference between geender. Among a total of 2380 students who answers the questionnaire, 40.7% are male and 59.3% are female.

Level of knowledge about generical characteristics of COVID-19 is quite similar among gender. Students present a good level of knowledge about the clinical presentation of the disease, the basic hygiene principles, the modes of transmission and the method of protection against virus transmission. The knowledge about number of this pandemia and easy scientific correlation with COVID-19 is quite confused. The most frequently reported source of knowledge about COVID-19 is television, whereas the less is the school. Our findings suggest that student population shows appropriate practice, and positive attitude towards COVID-19 at the time of its outbreak.

More emphasis should be placed on education of the student partecipants about biological meaning of this infection and relative preventive or future measures.

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  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.05.08.084236: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board Statementnot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variableA small subgroup of twenty male and twenty female students are asked to complete the questionnaire and then to ask some questions on whether the questionnaire is easy to understand, to complete and to submit.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    2.3 Statistical analysis: All the statistical analyses are performed by using statistical package for social sciences (SPSS Inc., Chicago, Illinois, USA) version 26.0.
    SPSS
    suggested: (SPSS, RRID:SCR_002865)

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No funding statement was detected.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  2. Version published to 10.1101/2020.05.08.084236v1 on bioRxiv