The World Café as a Tool for Evaluating the Level of Acceptance of SARS-CoV-2 Screening in School Settings, Puglia Region, Italy, 2023

Background

The introduction of screening tests for Sars-CoV-2 has been an extraordinary prevention and control tool during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, pandemic control interventions, including screening and vaccine mandates, induced refusal reactions in many people. To date, little information is available on the levels of acceptance of screening practices by the young population in school settings.

Objective

The objective of this work is to survey students' attitudes, behaviours and emotions towards Covid-19 screening tests by the means of a participatory research method, the World Café (WC).

Materials and Methods

Between March and May 2023, three WC sessions were conducted in three high schools, with 70 students enrolled on a voluntary basis. As per standard procedure, a moderator was assigned at each table to facilitate dialogue and the WCs were recorded, transcribed and imported into ATLAS.ti software for qualitative analysis.

Results

The analysis showed that the themes most reported during the WCs were those regarding the emotional domain, particularly feelings of distress, anxiety, fear, frustration, inadequacy and loneliness.

Discussion

Although the themes ‘Emotions/thoughts’ appear to be the most prominent among students, also ‘Public health policies’ constitutes a predominant theme group. Finally, the theme ‘Communication’ sparked lively debate, being the fourth most discussed topic.

Conclusions

The many insights from the WC analysis, when properly reframed, bring out useful elements for taking actions during prevention campaigns. Institutions and schools should focus on disseminating clear and targeted messages to help fight misinformation and distrust. Moreover, such evidence suggests that the World Café method proves to be useful and effective for exploring the emotional sphere of adolescents and analysing their thoughts, attitudes and knowledge.

Patient or Public Contribution

The research team collaborated with the school personnel to set up the right setting for running the World Café sessions. The World Café method allowed the researchers to gather students' insights by the means of a participative process. Honest debate and active engagement of students provided the researchers with a list of statements very useful for informing health policy and recommendations.