Preventive behaviors by the level of perceived infection sensitivity during the Korea outbreak of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome in 2015

Lee, Soon Young; Yang, Hee Jeong; Kim, Gawon; Cheong, Hae-Kwan; Choi, Bo Youl

For the four questions on infection sensitivity, responses in the category of "strongly agree" or "agree" were considered sensitive. The highest concerns on infection sensitivity were for children or elderly family members (68.1%), followed by concerns about socioeconomic chaos (61.7%), concerns about MERS infection (58.7%), and concerns about death in case of infection (37.7%) in that order. With respect to the perceived reliability of preventive behaviors practiced by participants, frequent hand washing with soap or sanitizer was thought to be the most reliable (92.9%), while the wearing of face masks when going outside was thought to be the least reliable (74.4%). Also, frequent hand washing with soap or sanitizer was the most practiced preventive behavior (89.3%) while the wearing of face masks when going outside was the least practiced preventive behavior (47.8%), showing that items thought to be highly reliable were also being practiced mostly. For the practice of hand washing, participants who answered that they washed their hands after using restrooms accounted for the highest proportion (95.1%), and those who washed their hands with soap or hand sanitizer were 89.9%. For questions on policy credibility, the highest proportion of responses (28.7%) were for the question concerning the dissemination of information about the MERS outbreak through the mass media, while overall responses of the government to MERS outbreak had the lowest response rate (15.6%) ( Table 1) .