Individual Preventive Behaviors of COVID-19 and Associated Psychological Factors Among Chinese Older Adults: A Cross-Sectional Online Survey

Yanping Duan; Chun Hu; Zhihua Lin; Wei Liang; Borui Shang; Julien Steven Baker; Jiali He; Yanping Wang

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2022.827152

Individual Preventive Behaviors of COVID-19 and Associated Psychological Factors Among Chinese Older Adults: A Cross-Sectional Online Survey

Front Psychol. 2022 Mar 21:13:827152. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.827152. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Yanping Duan^{1

2

3}, Chun Hu⁴, Zhihua Lin⁵, Wei Liang^{1

2}, Borui Shang⁶, Julien Steven Baker^{1

2}, Jiali He³, Yanping Wang¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Sport, Physical Education and Health, Hong Kong Baptist University, Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR, China.
² Center for Health and Exercise Science Research, Hong Kong Baptist University, Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR, China.
³ College of Health Science, Wuhan Institute of Physical Education, Wuhan, China.
⁴ Student Mental Health Education Center, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an, China.
⁵ Sport Section, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China.
⁶ Department of Kinesiology, Hebei Institute of Physical Education, Shijiazhuang, China.

Abstract

Purpose: Older adults aged 60 years and above are classified as being of high-risk for infection during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study aimed to investigate the associations of psychological factors (motivational factors: risk perception, health knowledge, attitude, subjective norm, motivational self-efficacy, and intention; volitional factors: volitional self-efficacy, planning, and action control) of preventive behaviors with three preventive behaviors (hand washing, facemask wearing, and social distancing) among Chinese older adults during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods: A cross-sectional questionnaire survey was administered via SOJUMP, a widely used online survey platform in China. A total of 928 older adults (mean = 67.24 years, age range: 60-90 years, SD = 6.43, 55.9% females) were recruited using a snowball sampling approach from Hubei Province (n = 667) and outside Hubei Province (n = 261) in China during May 18, 2020 to June 7, 2020. Multiple hierarchical regressions were conducted with four models to examine the association between demographic, past behavior, psychological factors and each preventive behavior.

Principal findings: All three preventive behaviors in older adults increased dramatically during the pandemic of COVID-19. Gender, living status, educational level, past behavior, health knowledge, intention and planning significantly predicted hand washing behavior, R ² = 0.395, F(10, 927) = 54.372, p < 0.001. Gender, education level, important others (e.g., family members or friends) infection, past behavior, health knowledge, planning and action control significantly predicted mask wearing behavior, R ² = 0.202, F(10, 927) = 23.197, p < 0.001. Living place, past behavior and health knowledge significantly predicted social distancing behavior, R ² = 0.204, F(9, 927) = 26.201, p < 0.001.

Major conclusions: Past behavior and health knowledge predicted all three preventive behaviors. Planning was an important psychological factor for both hand washing and mask wearing behaviors. All those critical demographic and psychological factors are critical for future interventions to facilitate older adults to comply with three preventive behaviors in daily life and to stay healthy during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Keywords: COVID-19 pandemic; demographic factors; older adults; preventive behaviors; psychological factors.