*3.2. Scale for Overall Prevention Behaviors Score*

Descriptive statistics for items in the Health Belief Model, presented in Table 2, show that the most common prevention behavior shown by 81.0% of all of the survey participants was avoiding going for walks in the parks, followed by not leaving home during the lockdown (72.6%), and washing hands every day with soap and water for 20 s

after going out of their home (64.0%). Avoiding any non-essential travel, and avoiding public transportation were the next most common actions, reported by 63.8%, and 63.2% of study participants, respectively. Staying six feet away from the other people (44.4%) and following all basic protective measures (e.g., hand washing, the use of a face covering in public, social distancing) to protect yourself against COVID-19 (33.0%) were other notable behaviors. Descriptive statistics for additional HBM items are also presented in Table 2.

Figure 1 shows the frequency of count variables of the overall prevention behavior scale. The distribution of COVID-19 preventive behaviors/actions score of the participants towards COVID-19 resembles the normal distribution. One in three or 32.4% of participants indicated performing eight or more preventive actions. A roughly equal proportion (31.4%) performed four or fewer prevention activities. The remaining 36.2% reported between five and seven COVID-19-related preventive actions.

Note: Number of prevention behaviors refers to the number of "yes" responses by each study participant on prevention behaviors items listed in Table 2 under the section "Individual behaviors/actions concerning COVID prevention."

**Figure 1.** Percent of Study Participants by Number of Prevention Behaviors Concerning COVID-19 (with potential range from 0 to 12).

> Table 3 shows the results of the ANOVA, comparing means of preventive behaviors/actions score by COVID-19-related statements representing constructs of the HBM. The mean prevention behavior scores for those answering "yes" were significantly different (*p* < 0.05) than those answering "no" for the individual items/statements representing HBM constructs. These constructs included perceived susceptibility to disease, perceived severity of the disease, perceived benefits of preventative action, perceived barriers of preventative action, and cues to action. Comparisons of means for pension behavior score by socio-demographic characteristics are available in Table S1 (supplemental digital content). The differences in prevention behavior scores were noteworthy by the number of people in the household, with smaller size households having significantly higher scores. The mean score for persons with <5 members in the household was 7.74, whereas for those with ≥10 members the mean prevention score was 3.37. Higher prevention behavior scores were observed for individuals with higher education, those younger than 34 years, single/divorced rather than married, and those who owned their homes.

**Table 3.** Analysis of variance for comparison of mean number of COVID-19 prevention behavior \* by participants' beliefs and perceptions about COVID-19, Depalpur City, Pakistan, 2020.


\* Mean Score for the COVID-19 prevention behavior scale [Range 0–12]. The number of prevention behaviors refer to number of "yes" responses by each study participant on prevention behaviors items listed in Table 2 under the section "Individual behaviors/actions concerning COVID prevention". Abbreviations: CI, Confidence Interval; LL, Lower Limit; UL, Upper Limit. Note: Bolded font for *p* indicates the significance of differences in mean at *p* < 0.05.
