Protective motivators and precautionary behaviors against COVID-19 in Turkey

Abstract

In this research, we investigated the protection motivators and precautionary behaviors against coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and the associations between them. To do this, we developed two original scales, collected data (2783 responses) using an online survey, after removing the responses (319), which were filled in incompletely or incorrectly in the questionnaire, we obtained 2464 participants covering the aged 18+ population in Turkey. Based on random sampling, our sample complies with these ratios and generally reflects the aged 18+ population of Turkey. We confirmed the psychometrical validity and reliability of our two scales using the collected data. Herewith, we found that perceived susceptibility of COVID-19 infection is very high, perceived severity of COVID-19 is medium, COVID-19 related information seeking is high, beliefs on precautions' efficacy is high and also the practice of precautionary behaviors is high. Our research depicts that all protection motivators significantly are related with the practice of precautionary behaviors (routine and leisure). However, with the only exception of perceived severity of COVID-19 is not related with precautionary behaviors (routine). Besides, we saw that females' average in all variables is significantly higher than males and some variables are sensitive to age, education level, marital status and the number of children. We believe that the findings provide essential inputs for authorities in establishing public health policies against the present pandemic and likely ones in the future.