Knowledge and Behaviors towards COVID-19 among University of Aleppo Students: An Online Cross-sectional Survey

  1. Aos Alhamid
  2. Ziad Aljarad
  3. Ahmad Alhamid

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Abstract

Background

Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an infection caused by a novel coronavirus that affects respiratory tract. People’s awareness and knowledge of, and behavior and attitude toward COVID-19 are scarcely investigated, making medical literature related to this point poor. we aim to measure the knowledge of, and the reaction to COVID-19 among University of Aleppo students in Syria, and the determinants of their awareness and behavior regarding this disease.

Materials and Methods

This was an online, questionnaire-based cross-sectional study, that was conducted from 21st March to 30 March 2020. We included undergraduate students of the University of Aleppo (Syria). The questionnaire consisted of three sections: Demographics,knowledge and behaviours. Every participant’s knowledge was scored from 0-13 depending on the number of correct answers in the knowledge section. The correctness was judged depending on WHO recommendations at the time of questionnaire administration. P-value of 0.05 was considered significant.

Results

Among this well-educated and predominantly medical and health-related students, 682 (45.4%) students had a good knowledge level, which is somehow disappointing. The current study shows that 1st year students and non-medical specialties students and smokers had significantly lower knowledge levels than others. On contrary, residing with less people-which may indicate a higher socioeconomic status-, was associated with a higher knowledge level. We also found that commitment to preventive measures was in general satisfying and correlated significantly with knowledge level and gender in most cases.

Conclusion

Junior students, non-medical specialties, smokers and those who live with high number of people are vulnerable to less knowledge level and awareness campaigns should concentrate on them. Increasing awareness is useful to increase commitment to preventive measures, and groups that have less adherence to preventive measures, as described in detail, should be taken into consideration while designing public health responses. Finally, we should be aware of the negative impact of quarantine on public health to take it into consideration for current campaigns and future policies.

Article activity feed

  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.07.11.20151035: (What is this?)

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

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementConsent: The front page of the questionnaire contained a detailed informed consent statement for participation, and a button through it the participant can confirm the consent.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    We conducted statistical analysis using SPSS (Version 22.0; SPSS Inc.: Chicago, IL, USA).
    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: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    Our study has major limitations. First, the questionnaire is delivered online, which makes quality control challenging, and reduces the accessibility of some vulnerable groups less probable. In addition, our tools were not well developed and standardized because of limited time and accessibility to the target population.

    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.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • 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 10.1101/2020.07.11.20151035v1 on medRxiv