Short report: COVID-19 related knowledge, anxiety, and attitude towards the back-to-school arrangement among college students in China: a cross-sectional study

ABSTRACT

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has been assumed to affect mental health of college students. The present cross-sectional study was conducted to examine levels of knowledge and anxiety about COVID-19, as well as attitude towards the back-to-school arrangement among college students in China in May 2020. A total of 716 students (312 males, 404 females) were included. Only 38.1% of the participants showed good knowledge about COVID-19. Moderate and severe anxiety was observed among 7.6% of the students. There were 15.6% of the participants opposing the back-to-school arrangement. Female students had more risk of having anxiety symptoms and negative attitude towards the back-to-school arrangement (p < 0.05). In addition, the level of anxiety was positively associated with the negative attitude towards the back-to-school arrangement (r = 0.11, p < 0.05). We therefore suggest that health education and psychological interventions should be given to college students, especially females and those without health-related backgrounds during the COVID-19 pandemic.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19
• college students
• knowledge
• anxiety
• attitude towards the back-to-school arrangement

Acknowledgments

To the college students who participated in this project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.