Knowledge, attitudes and preventative practices (KAPs) towards COVID-19 among international students in China

Abstract Introduction: Despite the world having history of fighting pandemics the coming of Corona virus disease 2019 (COVID-19), which started in Wuhan in China late last year, has had the worst devastating impacts the world has never seen before. The study aimed to find out about the knowledge, attitudes and preventative practices of COVID-19 among international students in China during the pandemic.Material and methods: A cross-section survey was conducted among 300 international students from 13 different universities in Hubei province of China between March and April 2020 which relied upon convenience sampling method. Data was collected through an online Microsoft questionnaire. The analysis of data was done by using software IBM SPSS version 23 with p-value of 0.05 which was considered as statistical significance. Descriptive analysis and multi-linear regression analysis were conducted to find association between variables.Results and discussion : Out of 300 respondents 153 (51%) of the respondents were female students, of which the majority were single, undergraduate students who were doing medicine 163 (54.3%) and engineering-programmes 68 (22.7%). The results indicated that the vast majority of international students had an impressive knowledge on the causes, risks and spread of COVID-19 and that they were no misconception of the pandemic 229 (76%) to 281 (98%) respectively. These students also demonstrated a markedly positive attitude towards the virus and a feeling that they were almost complete safe being in China 264 (84%). Variations were found on Knowledge scores in age group(P<0.01) and majors (P=0.025), attitude scores on major of study (P=0.015) and experience (P<0.01). Furthermore, the results revealed that almost all the students 300 (100%) adhered to and practiced set preventive measures against COVID-19 and that there was a positive correlation between attitudes and preventative practices (r=0.219, P <0.01).Conclusion: This study found that social media platform was contributing enormously towards information dissemination and Chinese universities were commended for their continuous notifications on COVID-19 which helped students to have full knowledge. This, in turn, was instrumental in helping students to form good attitudes and practices towards COVID-19.