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

Multiple logistic regression analysis were conducted to find how perceived infection sensitivity groups were associated with high stress levels, reliability and practice of preventive behaviors, the practice of hand washing and policy credibility during the outbreak. The social concern group, neutral group, and overall sensitive group had higher stress levels during the outbreak than the non-sensitive group. They were also found more significantly, to consider preventive behaviors reliable and had significantly higher rates of practicing preventive behaviors and hand washing, even after adjustment for control variables. Responses on policy credibility were significantly higher only in the overall sensitive group. In particular, the OR of high stress levels during the outbreak period in the overall sensitive group was 17.80 (95% CI, 13.77 to 23.00), indicating that the overall sensitive group had higher stress levels than the non-sensitive group (Figure 2) .