A cross-sectional survey assessing the influence of theoretically informed behavioural factors on hand hygiene across seven countries during the COVID-19 pandemic

BACKGROUND: Human hygiene behaviours influence the transmission of infectious diseases. Changing maladaptive hygiene habits has the potential to improve public health. Parents and teachers can play an important role in disinfecting surface areas and in helping children develop healthful handwashing...

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Autores principales: Schmidtke, K. A., Drinkwater, K. G.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8293513/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34289816
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-021-11491-4
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author Schmidtke, K. A.
Drinkwater, K. G.
author_facet Schmidtke, K. A.
Drinkwater, K. G.
author_sort Schmidtke, K. A.
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Human hygiene behaviours influence the transmission of infectious diseases. Changing maladaptive hygiene habits has the potential to improve public health. Parents and teachers can play an important role in disinfecting surface areas and in helping children develop healthful handwashing habits. The current study aims to inform a future intervention that will help parents and teachers take up this role using a theoretically and empirically informed behaviour change model called the Capabilities-Opportunities-Motivations-Behaviour (COM-B) model. METHODS: A cross-sectional online survey was designed to measure participants’ capabilities, opportunities, and motivations to [1] increase their children’s handwashing with soap and [2] increase their cleaning of surface areas. Additional items captured how often participants believed their children washed their hands. The final survey was administered early in the coronavirus pandemic (May and June 2020) to 3975 participants from Australia, China, India, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, and the United Kingdom. Participants self-identified as mums, dads, or teachers of children 5 to 10 years old. ANOVAs analyses were used to compare participant capabilities, opportunities, and motivations across countries for handwashing and surface disinfecting. Multiple regressions analyses were conducted for each country to assess the predictive relationship between the COM-B components and children’s handwashing. RESULTS: The ANOVA analyses revealed that India had the lowest levels of capability, opportunity, and motivation, for both hand hygiene and surface cleaning. The regression analyses revealed that for Australia, Indonesia, and South Africa, the capability component was the only significant predictor of children’s handwashing. For India, capability and opportunity were significant. For the United Kingdom, capability and motivation were significant. Lastly, for Saudi Arabia all components were significant. CONCLUSIONS: The discussion explores how the Behaviour Change Wheel methodology could be used to guide further intervention development with community stakeholders in each country. Of the countries assessed, India offers the greatest room for improvement, and behaviour change techniques that influence people’s capability and opportunities should be prioritised there. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12889-021-11491-4.
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spelling pubmed-82935132021-07-21 A cross-sectional survey assessing the influence of theoretically informed behavioural factors on hand hygiene across seven countries during the COVID-19 pandemic Schmidtke, K. A. Drinkwater, K. G. BMC Public Health Research BACKGROUND: Human hygiene behaviours influence the transmission of infectious diseases. Changing maladaptive hygiene habits has the potential to improve public health. Parents and teachers can play an important role in disinfecting surface areas and in helping children develop healthful handwashing habits. The current study aims to inform a future intervention that will help parents and teachers take up this role using a theoretically and empirically informed behaviour change model called the Capabilities-Opportunities-Motivations-Behaviour (COM-B) model. METHODS: A cross-sectional online survey was designed to measure participants’ capabilities, opportunities, and motivations to [1] increase their children’s handwashing with soap and [2] increase their cleaning of surface areas. Additional items captured how often participants believed their children washed their hands. The final survey was administered early in the coronavirus pandemic (May and June 2020) to 3975 participants from Australia, China, India, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, and the United Kingdom. Participants self-identified as mums, dads, or teachers of children 5 to 10 years old. ANOVAs analyses were used to compare participant capabilities, opportunities, and motivations across countries for handwashing and surface disinfecting. Multiple regressions analyses were conducted for each country to assess the predictive relationship between the COM-B components and children’s handwashing. RESULTS: The ANOVA analyses revealed that India had the lowest levels of capability, opportunity, and motivation, for both hand hygiene and surface cleaning. The regression analyses revealed that for Australia, Indonesia, and South Africa, the capability component was the only significant predictor of children’s handwashing. For India, capability and opportunity were significant. For the United Kingdom, capability and motivation were significant. Lastly, for Saudi Arabia all components were significant. CONCLUSIONS: The discussion explores how the Behaviour Change Wheel methodology could be used to guide further intervention development with community stakeholders in each country. Of the countries assessed, India offers the greatest room for improvement, and behaviour change techniques that influence people’s capability and opportunities should be prioritised there. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12889-021-11491-4. BioMed Central 2021-07-21 /pmc/articles/PMC8293513/ /pubmed/34289816 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-021-11491-4 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research
Schmidtke, K. A.
Drinkwater, K. G.
A cross-sectional survey assessing the influence of theoretically informed behavioural factors on hand hygiene across seven countries during the COVID-19 pandemic
title A cross-sectional survey assessing the influence of theoretically informed behavioural factors on hand hygiene across seven countries during the COVID-19 pandemic
title_full A cross-sectional survey assessing the influence of theoretically informed behavioural factors on hand hygiene across seven countries during the COVID-19 pandemic
title_fullStr A cross-sectional survey assessing the influence of theoretically informed behavioural factors on hand hygiene across seven countries during the COVID-19 pandemic
title_full_unstemmed A cross-sectional survey assessing the influence of theoretically informed behavioural factors on hand hygiene across seven countries during the COVID-19 pandemic
title_short A cross-sectional survey assessing the influence of theoretically informed behavioural factors on hand hygiene across seven countries during the COVID-19 pandemic
title_sort cross-sectional survey assessing the influence of theoretically informed behavioural factors on hand hygiene across seven countries during the covid-19 pandemic
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8293513/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34289816
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-021-11491-4
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