Risk Perceptions, Knowledge and Behaviors of General and High-Risk Adult Populations Towards COVID-19: A Systematic Scoping Review

  1. Nathalie Clavel
  2. Janine Badr
  3. Lara Gautier
  4. Mélanie Lavoie-Tremblay
  5. Jesseca Paquette

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Abstract

Objectives: The COVID-19 pandemic represents a major crisis for governments and populations. The public’s risk perceptions, knowledge, and behaviors are key factors that play a vital role in the transmission of infectious diseases. Our scoping review aims to map the early evidence on risk perceptions, knowledge, and behaviors of general and high-risk adult populations towards COVID-19.

Methods: A systematic scoping review was conducted of peer-reviewed articles in five databases on studies conducted during the early stages of COVID-19. Thirty-one studies meeting the inclusion criteria were appraised and analyzed.

Results: The levels of risk perceptions, knowledge, and behaviors towards COVID-19 were moderate to high in both general and high-risk adult populations. Adults were knowledgeable about preventive behaviors. Our review identified hand-washing and avoiding crowded places as dominant preventive behaviors. Being a female, older, more educated, and living in urban areas was associated with better knowledge of COVID-19 and appropriate preventive behaviors.

Conclusion: This review offers a first understanding of risk perceptions, knowledge and behaviors of adult populations during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.

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  1. Version published to 10.3389/phrs.2021.1603979
  2. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.02.09.21250257: (What is this?)

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

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board Statementnot detected.
    RandomizationA pilot round with a randomly generated sample of nearly 10% of the articles was done to evaluate inter-reviewer agreement on the exclusion and inclusion criteria before a full screening was done for all articles (19, 20).
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    Since all articles were cross-sectional studies, the quality of studies was assessed using the appraisal tool for cross-sectional studies (AXIS tool) (21), which was developed to appraise observational cross-sectional studies (21).
    AXIS
    suggested: (AxIS , RRID:SCR_016308)

    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 scoping review has several limitations. We decided to cover a short period (January-June 2020). In the context of the pandemic, a large number of studies were conducted and published very early. Consequently, a first step in mapping the emerging evidence has been to gain an understanding of RPKB towards COVID-19 in the early stage of the pandemic. We did not provide a cross-comparison between countries, mainly because of the significant heterogeneity of studies regarding survey and sampling methods and the absence of cross-country studies in the scoping review. Finally, because the overall quality of the included articles was quite low, the research findings presented here should be interpreted carefully. Most studies used non-probability sampling and online surveys that raises doubts about the capacity for authors to generalize the research findings. While online surveys allow a rapid and user-friendly data collection from large samples of the population, they can also increase the likelihood of sampling and non-response bias (42). Overall, in the early months of the pandemic, the levels of RPKB towards COVID-19 were moderate to high in both general and high-risk populations. We did not notice significant differences in RPs between the general and the high-risk adult populations. Nevertheless, two studies, one with pregnant women in Turkey (35) and the other with poor households in Kenya (36) reported low-risk perception levels, in contrast to six other studies conducted...

    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.

  3. Version published to 10.1101/2021.02.09.21250257v1 on medRxiv