Knowledge and perceptions of COVID-19 among government employees in Ethiopia

  1. Wakgari Deressa
  2. Alemayehu Worku
  3. Wondwosson Amogne
  4. Sefonias Getachew
  5. Awgichew Kifle
  6. Workeabeba Abebe

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Abstract

Background

In the absence of effective treatments or vaccines, the spread of the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic can be minimized by effectively implementing preventive measures. Knowledge and perceptions of the public about COVID-19 play a critical role in behavioral changes. This study aimed to assess the knowledge and perceptions of COVID-19 as well as source of information about the disease among government employees.

Methods

A cross-sectional survey of 1,573 government employees from 46 public institutions located in Addis Ababa was undertaken from 8 th to 19 th June 2020. Paper-based self-administered questionnaires were used for data collection. ANOVA test and t-test were used to assess the difference between groups.

Results

The respondents demonstrated very high knowledge of the cause of COVID-19 (93%), its main clinical symptoms (>90%), the main modes of transmission (89%), the main preventive measures (>90%). Almost all respondents reported that people with recent travel history (86.8%) or people who had contact with COVID-19 patients (93.5%) were the high-risk groups to be infected with coronavirus. In addition, more than half (50.9%) of the study participants reported that people without travel history nor had contact with confirmed cases are also most likely to be infected with the virus. About 84% of the respondents perceived that older adults and elderly were most at risk to die from COVID-19. Similarly, the majority of the respondents reported that adults with other underlying health problems (95.4%), cigarette smokers (88.1%) and substance users (87.5%) were more likely to die from the disease. An electronic media such as television (85.5%), social media (74.1%), online materials (71.1%) and radio (60.8%) constituted the primary sources of information about COVID-19, followed by healthcare workers (66.6%) and print materials (35.4%). Television (32.2%) and health workers (30.5%) constituted the most trusted sources of information related to COVID-19.

Conclusions

This study has showed higher level of knowledge and favorable perception among respondents about COVID-19. Knowledge and perceptions have great roles in behavioral change and efforts should be focused on improving the perceived susceptibility, severity, and benefits of preventive behavioral changes by providing timely and adequate information.

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  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.11.12.20230615: (What is this?)

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

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementConsent: After obtaining informed consent from all potential participants, the questionnaires were distributed to the respondents.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    Statistical analyses: Data were entered into the Census Surveys Professional (CSPro) version 7.2 statistical software package and imported into the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 23 (SPSS Inc., IBM, USA) for cleaning and analysis.
    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:
    Despite generating highly valuable and timely findings, this study was not without some limitations. First, due to limited internet access and online information sources in the country, the study was based on paper-based self-administered survey that only included government employees in Addis Ababa, where vulnerable populations and illiterate people were not captured in the study. Ideally, a randomly selected sample of the public should be interviewed about COVID-19. Second, due to the threat of pandemic and the social distancing rule, it was not possible to conduct a face-to-face interview. Third, the data presented in this study are self-reported and partly dependent on the respondent’s honesty and recall ability, thus they may be subject to recall and social desirability biases. They also could have been affected by selection bias. Nevertheless, this study provides valuable information about the knowledge and perception of COVID-19 among government employees, and the findings can be used to direct specific public health interventions or messages to the government employees.

    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 10.1101/2020.11.12.20230615 on medRxiv