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Willingness to change health behaviors during Covid-19 Pandemic in Population of Rawalpindi City, Pakistan
ABSTRACT
Background:
In Covid-19 Pandemic, despite of Pakistan government’s precautionary policies, people are not practicing the standard preventive measures. People need to change their health behaviors to control the transmission of the disease. The purpose of this study is to assess the willingness of people of Rawalpindi city to change/adapt their health behaviors during pandemic and associate the same with their various demographic variables during the pandemic. Willingness was determined through respondents’ knowledge, risk perceptions, attitudes and practices during Covid-19 Pandemic.
Objective:
The main objectives of the study are to assess the general population’s willingness to change their health behaviors during Covid-19 pandemic in Rawalpindi city of Pakistan and to determine the association between the demographic variables with willingness to change health behaviors.
Methods:
A Cross-sectional study was conducted in the Rawalpindi city of Pakistan. It was Community household survey conducted in four randomly selected Union Councils of Rawalpindi City. The survey was done by systemic sampling of the households. A structured questionnaire was used for data collection made on the guidelines of the National Institute of Health, Pakistan; comprises of sixty-six questions consisting of five sections. Cronbach's alpha was 0.92 calculated by Statistical packages for the social sciences (SPSS).
Results:
The results of the study reported that 89.2% of the respondents showed willingness to change health behaviors during Covid-19 pandemic. Chi-square of association revealed that seven demographic characteristics were statistically significant includes age, gender, marital status, income, occupation, number of children, and diagnosed co-morbidities of respondents. Regression analysis showed that monthly income of the respondents was the true predictor with Odds ratio of 8.69.
Conclusions:
The respondents, with higher scores of knowledge, risk perceptions, attitude and practices towards the Covid-19 pandemic showed high willingness to change their health behaviors in Rawalpindi city of Pakistan.
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