Knowledge and attitude towards COVID-19 among university students

Abstract

The present study aimed to assess the knowledge and attitude of university students about the new evolving coronavirus COVID-19. In this connection, the study was carried out among the students of SKUAST-K. A descriptive survey method was used to conduct the study. Under the jurisdiction of SKUAST-K, Shalimar, Srinagar, Faculty of Fisheries was selected by purposive sampling technique. The target population of the study comprised of the students of Faculty of Fisheries, Rangil, Ganderbal with total population size of 193. The sample of study constituted 100 students. Stratified random sampling technique was used for present study and the samples were taken proportionally with the total number of undergraduate and postgraduate students, with 62 students from U.G, 25 students from masters and 13 students from Ph.D. respectively. A self-administered questionnaire was developed to obtain information from the respondents. The data collected from the survey was analyzed using standard statistical tools like descriptive statistics such as frequency and percentage and inferential statistics such as Chi-square test. PAST 4.0 and SPSS version 20.0 was used for analysis of data. From the present study, it was concluded that majority of the respondents were having good knowledge towards COVID-19 and were very much aware about general information, cause, symptoms, transmission routes and prevention of the coronavirus disease. However, the respondents in the study were also having certain misconceptions pertaining to certain aspects of COVID-19. Majority of the respondents were of the opinion that imposing restrictions on travel to and from COVID-19 contaminated areas, closure of all educational institutes, limiting access to religious sites, isolating COVID-19 patients in special isolation wards, maintaining social distancing and locking down and quarantining whole population was a good decision by government. The respondents also showed a positive attitude towards role of media in covering COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, from the study, majority of the respondents disagreed that the government took all the necessary steps to tackle COVID19 virus successfully.