Dataset on social media use during COVID-19: Associations with self-efficacy, perceived threat, and preventive behavior.

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is the most significant public health crisis of this century, and the world has been facing multiple challenges for the last two years, including a high death toll, the imposition of various forms of lockdown and the unavailability of vaccines. Globally, people have faced fearful situations and sought information from social media in order to understand the severity of the situation as well as to protect themselves and others. In comparison to traditional media (electronic and print), social media provides quick and easy access to information, making its impact timely and powerful. The cross-sectional data reflects social media use and its associations with self-efficacy, perceived threat, and preventive behavior in the time of COVID-19 among the people of Pakistan. An online-based cross-sectional survey has been conducted to obtain data from the respondents. These respondents were reached out by sharing a hyperlink through various social media platforms. A total number of 310 respondents furnished their responses. The survey was completed in April 2020. This data may be of great interest to researchers, policymakers, research organizations, and social and mental health practitioners who wish to explore other dimensions of mental health issues caused by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Social Media Use, Self-Efficacy, Perceived Threat, and Preventive Behavior in Times of COVID-19: Results of a Cross-Sectional Study in Pakistan.

Although the role of social media in infectious disease outbreaks is receiving increasing attention, little is known about the mechanisms by which social media use affects risk perception and preventive behaviors during such outbreaks. This study aims to determine whether there are any relationships between social media use, preventive behavior, perceived threat of coronavirus, self-efficacy, and socio-demographic characteristics. The data were collected from 310 respondents across Pakistan using an online cross-sectional survey. Reliability analyses were performed for all scales and structural equational modeling was used to identify the relationships between study variables. We found that: (i) social media use predicts self-efficacy (ß = 0.25, p < 0.05) and perceived threat of coronavirus (ß = 0.54, p < 0.05, R 2 = 0.06), and (ii) preventive behavior is predicted by self-efficacy and perceived threat of coronavirus (R = 0.10, p < 0.05). Therefore, these results indicate the importance of social media's influence on health-related behaviors. These findings are valuable for health administrators, governments, policymakers, and social scientists, specifically for individuals whose situations are similar to those in Pakistan.