Objectives: Manual and Craft Workers (MACWs), who constitute more than 80% of the population, were identified to be a vulnerable group to COVID-19 in Qatar. The goal of this study is to identify the limitations face MACWs in Qatar towards practicing the COVID-19 preventive measures and thereby designing behavioral change strategies. Methods: This is a qualitative research study in which individual interviews and focus group discussions were utilized for a deep understanding of the phenomenon from key informants. Four onlive individual interviews and four focus groups (n = 55) were conducted and transcribed verbatim. Inductive qualitative analysis was followed to discover the themes of the interviews. Data were analyzed using constant comparative techniques. Results: Major themes elicited from the analysis revealed that the barriers to following COVID-19 preventive behaviors among migrant workers in Qatar included barriers related to knowledge and risk perception; lifestyle and habits; nature of work and living conditions, and barriers related to health communication, diversified cultures, and languages. Conclusion: The findings would support constructing culturally sensitive health education messages and planning for effective health communication campaigns.
Keywords: COVID-19; Qatar; lifestyle; living conditions; migrant workers; risk perception.
Copyright © 2022 Al-Jayyousi, Nour, Suliman, Abed Alah, Ali, Abdeen, Al-Thani, Jaffrey, Al-Romaihi and Farag.