OPIPH Poster:

Understanding college students' intentions to follow COVID-19 precautions with the Theory of Planned Behavior

Authors

Crys Davis, DJ McMaughan, Kelley Rhoads, Xuewei Chen, Ho Han, Richard A. Jones, Carlos Maheffey, Bridget Miller

Crys Davis is a doctoral candidate in Research, Evaluation, Measurement and Statistics and a Master’ in Public Health candidate at Oklahoma State University. Her research focuses on place attachment and recovery after disasters, mortality trends in the wake of disasters, disability and health, and public health. She is a faculty member at Northern Oklahoma College, where she teaches biology and medical terminology. In her spare time, Crys is a volunteer disaster responder with American Red Cross and Stillwater Emergency Management.

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has been a tremendous global public health emergency. It also highlighted differences in individuals’ intention to adopt strategies to mitigate against COVID-19. The reopening of colleges and universities has been linked to increases in the community spread of COVID-19, and counties containing colleges and universities experienced higher rates of COVID-19. Using the theory of planned behavior as a framework, this study investigated factors that influenced college students’ behaviors and their intention to adopt COVID-19 precautions.

Methods: We surveyed 849 college students in Oklahoma about adoption of COVID-19 precautions, specifically mask wearing, hand washing, social distancing, and avoiding large gatherings, and more generally about following CDC recommendations. The survey contained items asking students if they believed COVID-19 precautions were effective in slowing the spread of the virus (attitude towards actions). It also contained items focusing on how students believed their family, friends, and peers felt about COVID-19 precautions (normative beliefs), whether students felt they had the ability to follow precautions (perceived behavioral control), and whether they intend to follow COVID-19 precautions. Structural equation modeling was used to conduct an analysis of the utility of the theory of planned behavior in explaining intention to use COVID-19 precautions.

Results: The final model was an excellent fit to the data. The theory of planned behavior explained more of the variance in mask wearing, social distancing and avoiding large gatherings than hand washing. Students’ attitudes toward the effectiveness of COVID-19 precautions were more highly correlated with student’s intentions to follow precautions than either their normative beliefs or perceived behavioral control.

Conclusion: The theory of planned behavior can be used to understand intention to adopt COVID-19 precautions. Targeting students’ attitudes about the effectiveness of outbreak-related precautions in college populations may help stop the community spread of communicable illnesses.

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