Preventive Behavioral Insights for Emerging Adults: A Survey during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Sunhee Park, Beomsoo Kim and Kyoung A. Kim
Additional contact information
Sunhee Park: Barun ICT Research Center, Yonsei University, 50 Yonsei-ro, Seodaemun-Gu, Seoul 03722, Korea
Beomsoo Kim: Graduate School of Information, Yonsei University, 50 Yonsei-ro, Seodaemun-Gu, Seoul 03722, Korea
Kyoung A. Kim: Department of Nursing, Yeoju Institute of Technology 338, Sejong-ro, Yeoju-si 12652, Korea

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 5, 1-10

Abstract: Emerging adulthood is an important period for establishing health behavior patterns in life. This study aimed to examine factors related to preventive behaviors of emerging adults during the COVID-19 pandemic. A descriptive online survey design was used. Data were collected using a self-administrated, 28-item questionnaire completed by 239 undergraduate students from a university in Seoul, South Korea. The questionnaire was developed based on previous studies and the guidelines of the World Health Organization about COVID-19 preventive behaviors. The mean age of participants was 21.97 years, and the average score for COVID-19 preventive behaviors was 4.13 (SD: ±0.42) on a 5-point scale. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that subjective norms related to parents (? = 0.425, p < 0.001), issue involvement related to COVID-19 (? = 0.160, p = 0.024), and sex (? = 0.137, p = 0.029) were significant factors related to preventive behaviors of emerging adults after controlling for demographic characteristics. The variables explained 20.1% of the variance in preventive behaviors. The results of this study suggest that better strategies for subjective norms related to parents and issue involvement related to COVID-19 must be considered to improve emerging adults’ preventive behaviors.

Keywords: preventive behavior; emerging adulthood; COVID-19; infodemic; subjective norm (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/5/2569/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/5/2569/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:18:y:2021:i:5:p:2569-:d:510527

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().