Effectiveness of teaching COVID-19 protective and preventive behaviors on perceived and behavioral responses of students

Background & Aims: This research was conducted with the aim of investigating the effectiveness of teaching protective and preventive behaviors against COVID-19 on perceived and behavioral responses of students of Islamic Azad University, Sari Branch, Iran.
Materials & Methods: The current research method was a semi-experimental pre-test and post-test type with experimental and control groups. The statistical research population included all the students of Islamic Azad University, Sari Branch, Iran. 24 people were selected among them using the voluntary sampling method and were then randomly assigned into experimental and control groups. The research tool was a scale based on the protection motivation theory of Leidy and Ermord (2001). The protective and preventive behaviors of training was measured in 8 sessions of 90 minutes for the experimental group. The data were analyzed by SPSS statistical software version 26 and using one-way analysis of variance and covariance analysis to check the equality of means at the significance level of below 0.05.
Results: The results of the covariance showed that training COVID-19 protective and preventive behaviors was significantly effective on the perceived and behavioral responses of the students of Islamic Azad University, Sari Branch (P < 0.001).
Conclusion: Teaching protective and preventive behaviors against Covid-19 is effective in motivating protection, especially for the variables of perceived responses and meaningful behavioral responses. Considering the effectiveness of this method, its results can be used in future researches