Experience of the COVID-19 Pandemic in Rural Odisha, India: Knowledge, Preventative Actions, and Impacts on Daily Life

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Abstract

We conducted 131 semi-structured phone interviews with householders in rural Odisha, India to explore participants’ COVID-19 related knowledge, perceptions, and preventative actions, as well as how the pandemic affected their daily life, economic and food security, and the village-level response. Interviews were conducted with 73 heads of household, 37 primary caregivers, and 21 members of village water and sanitation committees from 43 rural villages in Ganjam and Gajapati districts in Odisha state. The study took place between May–July 2020 throughout various lockdown restrictions and at a time when many migrant workers were returning to their villages and cases were rising. Most respondents could name at least one correct symptom of COVID-19 (75%), but there was lower knowledge about causes of the disease and high-risk groups, and overall COVID-19 knowledge was lowest among caregivers. Respondents reported high compliance with important preventative measures, including staying home as much as possible (94%), social distancing (91%), washing hands frequently (96%), and wearing a facial mask (95%). Additionally, many respondents reported job loss (31%), financial challenges (93%), challenges related to staying home whether as a preventative measure or due to lockdowns (57%), changes in types and/or amount of food consumed (61%), and adverse emotional effects as a result of the pandemic and lockdown. We also provide detailed summaries of qualitative responses to allow for deeper insights into the lived experience of villagers during this pandemic. Although the research revealed high compliance with preventative measures, the pandemic and associated lockdowns also led to many challenges and hardships faced in daily life particularly around job loss, economic security, food security, and emotional wellbeing. The results underscore the vulnerability of marginalized populations to the pandemic and the need for measures that increase resilience to large-scale shocks.

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  1. SciScore for 10.1101/2020.11.20.20235630: (What is this?)

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

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementConsent: Ethics: Verbal informed consent was obtained from all participants before starting the interview.
    IRB: This study was approved by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) of Emory University (IRB00115339).
    RandomizationTarget respondents were randomly ordered using a computer-generated sequence, and research assistants were provided call lists to contact respondents in random order.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    Data analysis: Quantitative analysis of structured interview questions was done using descriptive statistics and chi-squared tests in Stata 16.1 (StataCorp LLC, College Station, Texas, USA).
    StataCorp
    suggested: (Stata, RRID:SCR_012763)

    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:
    This study had some important limitations. As it relied on phone interviews, we could only reach households with a mobile phone and network connection, which could potentially exclude the poorest and most remote households. However, we were able to talk to some respondents who lived in villages without a mobile network by connecting with them when they were outside the village in an area with network. Responses were also self-reported which may result in reporting bias, as respondents may over report practicing desirable hygienic behaviors, like handwashing (19–21). To try to reduce this bias and capture detailed experiences, the interview included several open-ended questions and asked follow-up explanations to closed-ended questions. Further findings related to handwashing and other WASH-related practices will also be reported in detail in a forthcoming paper. Additionally, although quantitative surveys have been used extensively to capture knowledge and impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic for large population samples, our use of open-ended, qualitative questions allowed us to explore the lived experiences of participants during this public health crisis more deeply than what can be captured by structured questions alone. Overall, the study results help identify gaps in local capacity building for information providers, content of the awareness messaging, and channel of communication for message delivery to ensure accessibility to all. In rural Odisha, ASHA workers, Anganwadi ...

    Results from TrialIdentifier: We found the following clinical trial numbers in your paper:

    IdentifierStatusTitle
    ISRCTN15831099NANA


    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.
    • Thank you for including a protocol registration statement.

    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.