Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene Practices and Challenges during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Cross-Sectional Study in Rural Odisha, India
This article has been Reviewed by the following groups
Listed in
- Evaluated articles (ScreenIT)
Abstract
Water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) practices emerged as a critical component to controlling and preventing the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. We conducted 131 semistructured phone interviews with households in rural Odisha, India, to understand behavior changes made in WASH practices as a result of the pandemic and challenges that would prevent best practices. Interviews were conducted from May through July 2020 with 73 heads of household, 37 caregivers of children < 5 years old, and 21 members of village water and sanitation committees in villages with community-level piped water and high levels of latrine ownership. The majority of respondents (86%, N = 104) reported a change in their handwashing practice due to COVID-19, typically describing an increase in handwashing frequency, more thorough washing method, and/or use of soap. These improved handwashing practices remained in place a few months after the pandemic began and were often described as a new consistent practice after additional daily actions (such as returning home), suggesting new habit formation. Few participants (13%) reported barriers to handwashing. Some respondents also detailed improvements in other WASH behaviors, including village-level cleaning of water tanks and/or treatment of piped water (48% of villages), household water treatment and storage (17% of respondents), and household cleaning (41% of respondents). However, there was minimal change in latrine use and child feces management practices as a result of the pandemic. We provide detailed thematic summaries of qualitative responses to allow for richer insights into these WASH behavior changes during the pandemic. The results also highlight the importance of ensuring communities have adequate WASH infrastructure to enable the practice of safe behaviors and strengthen resilience during a large-scale health crisis.
Article activity feed
-
-
SciScore for 10.1101/2021.01.26.21250274: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement Consent: When a respondent answered the phone, the research assistants introduced themselves, briefly explained the purpose of the call, and read a consent form, including consent to audio record the conversation.
IRB: The study was approved by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) of Emory University (IRB00115339).Randomization The phone numbers of HOH and caregiver target respondents were randomly ordered using a computer-generated sequence, and research assistants were instructed to contact respondents in the given random order. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Table 2: Resources
Software and Algorithms Sente… SciScore for 10.1101/2021.01.26.21250274: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement Consent: When a respondent answered the phone, the research assistants introduced themselves, briefly explained the purpose of the call, and read a consent form, including consent to audio record the conversation.
IRB: The study was approved by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) of Emory University (IRB00115339).Randomization The phone numbers of HOH and caregiver target respondents were randomly ordered using a computer-generated sequence, and research assistants were instructed to contact respondents in the given random order. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Table 2: Resources
Software and Algorithms Sentences Resources Data analysis: Stata 16.1 (StataCorp LLC, College Station, Texas, USA) was used for all quantitative analysis of structured survey questions. StataCorpsuggested: (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:
There are some limitations of this study. First, it relied on phone interviews, so we could only include participants with a mobile phone and network connection. This may exclude some of the poorest and most remote households, although we were able to interview some participants who lived in villages without a mobile network by calling them when they were in an area outside of their village that had network. Additionally, responses were self-reported. This could introduce reporting bias, as respondents sometimes overreport hygienic behaviors like handwashing due to courtesy bias or social desirability bias.35–37 Self-reports of increased handwashing also do not measure if handwashing is being performed correctly. While some respondents in our study explained they had learned the correct handwashing technique due to COVID-19 information campaigns and are now washing all parts of their hands, this may not be true of the entire study population. For example, in a study in Nigeria, only 39% of respondents washed all critical parts of their hands correctly when asked to demonstrate handwashing, compared to 90.5% of respondents who reported practicing regular handwashing with soap and water to prevent COVID-19.38 We tried to reduce reporting bias and capture detailed experiences by including several open-ended questions and asking for follow-up explanations to closed-ended questions. Finally, we targeted respondents who resided in villages that had completed the MANTRA program that...
Results from TrialIdentifier: We found the following clinical trial numbers in your paper:
Identifier Status Title ISRCTN15831099 NA NA 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 scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.
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.
-
