Publication Type

Journal Article

Version

publishedVersion

Publication Date

6-2021

Abstract

While the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic wreaked havoc across the globe, we have witnessed substantial mis- and disinformation regarding various aspects of the disease. We conducted a cross-sectional study using a self-administered questionnaire for the general public (recruited via social media) and healthcare workers (recruited via email) from the State of Qatar, and the Middle East and North Africa region to understand the knowledge of and anxiety levels around COVID-19 (April–June 2020) during the early stage of the pandemic. The final dataset used for the analysis comprised of 1658 questionnaires (53.0% of 3129 received questionnaires; 1337 [80.6%] from the general public survey and 321 [19.4%] from the healthcare survey). Knowledge about COVID-19 was significantly different across the two survey populations, with a much higher proportion of healthcare workers possessing better COVID-19 knowledge than the general public (62.9% vs. 30.0%, p

Keywords

COVID-19, health information, misinformation, anxiety, knowledge

Discipline

Databases and Information Systems | Health Information Technology | Public Health

Research Areas

Data Science and Engineering

Publication

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health

Volume

18

Issue

12

First Page

1

Last Page

12

ISSN

1661-7827

Identifier

10.3390/ijerph18126439

Publisher

MDPI

Additional URL

https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/12/6439

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