A Cross-Sectional Online Study in Context of Knowledge, Attitude and Practices of the General Public of Karachi, Pakistan on COVID-19 Pandemic

ABSTRACT

The COVID-19 pandemic has badly affected the human health and exerted a negative impact on national and global economies. The understanding, observations and responses of the general public during COVID pandemic may help in discussion about healthiness risk and encourage acquiescence with standard guiding principles. Therefore, the study was aimed to measure the Knowledge, Attitude and Practice (KAP) of an individual regarding the COVID-19. However, the present learning was in the setting of a web based cross sectional study conducted to evaluate the KAP among the general public via the dissemination of online Performa. In this context, a questionnaire was designed that was comprised into various scoring divisions to calculate the KAP. The KAP response was achieved from 842 persons and of this strength, 344 were male and 498 responses were attained from females. The Percentages and the frequencies were reported and calculated for each of the response and the chi-square test was applied to find the association (considering pvalue >0.05 as significant). The questionnaire was executed to the age of 22 years and above. On the basis of revealed knowledge (K1-7), the result of K3 and K7 were found highly significant (p-0.001), whilst the K4 response was significant (P≥0.05). The rest Ks were reported non-significant. Likewise, attitude (A1-5) was reported with high percentage in females and overall it was revealed highly significant (p- 0.002) in A5 response. In general, attitudes among genders were found comparatively encouraging and meaningful. Moreover, practices (P1-4) regarding COVID-19 showed week response to the sub divisions of P1-4 but, P2 and P3 were showed highly significant i.e. p-0.00 in both cases. Hence, majority of the general public presented good response against KAP regarding the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, incorporation of good practices and knowledge in life can enhance and maintain the population health. In this respect, the policymakers of government organizations have performed well in pointing the grass root populations having no education and un-aware workers via health promotional activities. © 2022