DIGITALKNOWLEDGE ABOUT COVID-19 AMONG BIOLOGY AND NON-BIOLOGY UNIVERSITY STUDENTS IN THE FACULTY OF EDUCATION OF J. SELYE UNIVERSITY IN SLOVAKIA
1 J. Selye University, Faculty of Education (SLOVAKIA)
2 J. Selye University, Faculty of Economics and Informatics (SLOVAKIA)
2 J. Selye University, Faculty of Economics and Informatics (SLOVAKIA)
About this paper:
Appears in: ICERI2021 Proceedings
Publication year: 2021
Pages: 852-860
ISBN: 978-84-09-34549-6
ISSN: 2340-1095
doi: 10.21125/iceri.2021.0260
Publication year: 2021
Pages: 852-860
ISBN: 978-84-09-34549-6
ISSN: 2340-1095
doi: 10.21125/iceri.2021.0260
Conference name: 14th annual International Conference of Education, Research and Innovation
Dates: 8-9 November, 2021
Location: Online Conference
Dates: 8-9 November, 2021
Location: Online Conference
Abstract:
Coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) is an emerging public health problem threatening the life of people worldwide. The World Health Organization declared COVID-19 as a pandemic on the 11th of March 2020. Since then, many efforts are being carried out to contain the virus. People's knowledge and attitude should be directed towards strict preventive practices to halt the spread of the virus. The present study sought to determine university students' knowledge of COVID-19 at J. Selye University in Slovakia. The study aims to assess the knowledge of university students from biology and non-biology study programs using a structured test.An online cross-sectional, descriptive study was undertaken through Google Forms in 2020, September-October. Two hundred sixty-seven respondents completed the test. The test consisted of two parts. The first part asked about the symptoms caused by COVID-19, and it consisted of 8 questions. The second part was about basic knowledge connected with COVID-19 and consist of 17 questions. Regarding the symptoms, 67.1% (SD = 17.2%) of the respondents knew the main symptoms of COVID-19 correctly, while 63.1% (SD = 11.8%) in the second part of the questionnaire knew the answers correctly. Only 3.9% of the respondents have sufficient knowledge (they passed the test above 80%) and 8.6% have insufficient knowledge (they passed the test below 50%). For our main research question were observed significant differences between the knowledge of biologists (67.1%) and non-biology students (63.3%) (t=2.739, df=265, p = 0.003 one-tailed). Students over the age of 25 performed significantly better results, as well as the group of the respondents in correspondence form (p=0,000). It was no significant difference according to gender and place of residence of the respondents. In the knowledge test, the students of lower primary school teacher program performed the best results (70.24%, SD = 8.72%), they followed by biologists (67.14%, SD = 9.29%), kindergarten and elementary school teacher program students (62.84%, SD = 9.95%), public education students (60.89%, SD = 8.89%) and finally rural development students (55.67%, SD = 18.8%).
More emphasis should be placed on this knowledge in prospective teachers' education, especially biologists. Thus, there is a need for more detailed and directed measures and awareness campaigns to improve the knowledge to contain the virus.