Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1-2024
Abstract
Introduction: the World Health Organization (WHO) recommended various measures to tackle COVID-19, and were adopted by many governments, targeting behavior change among citizens to lower the transmission. There was a paucity of data on the patterns of compliance with different measures within individuals and whether people adhere to all recommended measures or cautiously prefer few but not others. Understanding compliance behaviors and associated factors is important for developing interventions to increase compliance.
Methods: cross-sectional study was conducted among adults in the western region of Kenya. A sample of 806 participants was selected using a stratified sampling method. A structured questionnaire was used to gather data from the participants. Compliance was assessed with six behaviors: hand sanitation, proper hygiene, no handshaking, social distancing, and other guidelines. Latent analysis was used to identify behavioral patterns. Descriptive statistics were used to assess demographic characteristics, in terms of frequency distribution, and percentages. Multinomial logistic regression was used to assess the association between demographic characteristics and compliance level.
Results: compliance was highest for masking (85.3%), and was lowest for social distancing (60.2%). The majority of participants were found to be full compliers (class 1: 40.5%), there was an increased probability of full compliance among those aged between 18-30 years (OR= 1.042; 95% CI: 0.307-13.052, p < 0.040) compared to those aged ≥70
Conclusion: using facemasks had the highest rate of compliance, followed by hand sanitization and proper hygiene. However, overall, the findings showed that while compliance with some protocol behaviors is high, individuals comply consistently across recommended compliance behaviors.
Persistent Identifier
http://hdl.handle.net/10950/4959
Recommended Citation
Nyaranga, Caleb; Wilberforce, Cholo; and Njororai, Fletcher J., "Compliance with World Health Organization COVID19 preventive behaviors in rural counties in Western Kenya: a cross-sectional study" (2024). Population Health Leadership and Analytics Faculty Publications and Presentations. Paper 3.
http://hdl.handle.net/10950/4959
Comments
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution International 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.