*Geographical context of the pandemic in the country of study.*

Spain is a country that has stood out throughout the pandemic considering two aspects in the management executed by the authorities. First, control has been exercised from the central government, but each region of the country has its own competencies in health legislation. This means that although a state of alarm was decreed throughout the national territory (with the mandatory confinement of the entire population between March and June 2020, limitation of mobility, control of capacity in premises, mandatory use of a mask indoors, etc.), each region, as of September 2020, has implemented its own measures, which could not contradict State regulations, but which sometimes differed from one area of the country to another. This situation, similar to other countries such as Italy and Portugal, led to an unequal approach to the control of the pandemic, with large differences in contagion and control. Shelling the comparative aspects of the sample by country zone exceeds the objectives of this study, but that is why it is representative of most regions of the country. It is usual in this type of study to carry out an extensive data collection (longitudinal and cross-sectional study design) and with a sample that is as geographically heterogeneous as possible. The second important milestone in Spain was the premature vaccination campaign (December 2020) compared to other European countries, with a high vaccination rate throughout the national territory. However, this fact comes after the data collection of this study, so even in spite of its relevance (in terms of the explanation of risk perception, coping styles and sense of coherence in the face of health behaviors such as getting vaccinated), it is not worth discussing here.

#### *4.1. Descriptive Analysis of the Sample*

Risk perception makes it possible to assess why people do or do not take measures to protect themselves from external threats [23]; therefore, it would be desirable for the scores to be proportionally higher in the intrinsic subscale ("I can control my behavior to avoid risk factors"). In our study, we found that the extrinsic risk factor (FR1) was the highest in the sample. This variable is related to the disease as a risk (linked to the inevitability of the disease and "factors that are alien to me and over which I have no influence"). Our results could be justified in part by the "inevitability" of the disease, transmitted through the media and the lack of reliable data in the face of an unknown disease that generates fear, stress and uncertainty [24].

Both subscales of risk perception factors revealed medium-high values, in agreement with those obtained by other authors in Belgian NS populations [25], Saudi populations [26], German populations [20], Pakistani populations [23] and Spanish populations [27]. As in other professions, being in higher years of study [26] is associated with an increased perception of risk. Surprisingly, in contrast to the results obtained by others [20,23,26,27], gender does not seem to influence risk perception, which may be due to the low male representation in our sample. Having close experiences with COVID-19 reduces the perception of risk, in contrast with previous findings [25,27], although in these former studies, the "experiences" involve professional patient care, and in our study, the experiences are more related to the family or social environment.

The population analyzed showed high knowledge of prevention, which coincides with other studies conducted among nursing students [25,28] and medical students [29]. This is probably due to the fact that in the latter, data collection was carried out at the beginning of the pandemic, when numerous studies were being conducted [24,27]. In line with other authors, women [26,28] and students in higher years [26] who carried out their clinical practices during the pandemic showed greater knowledge. Unlike what was observed for risk factors, in our sample, knowledge was not affected by experiences related to COVID-19.

In relation to the coping styles scale, several papers have been published that use different scales to study the coping strategies used by the general population [20,23,30] or NS in particular [29,30] in the face of the pandemic. In line with our findings, other studies [31,32] have also found that situation-focused coping strategies are the most employed by students to face COVID-19, and they are more employed by females [20,23,31]. In our study, significant differences were found between men and women for the situationcentered and avoidance coping styles, with higher scores among women in both. It is also noteworthy that EA3 (support-seeking) yielded statistically significant differences between people who have suffered from the disease and those who have not, with higher scores in the former [33].

The most significant findings in SOC values revealed medium values on the total scale and on the three subscales, which is in line with similar studies [34,35]. Women scored significantly higher on the comprehensibility and meaningfulness subscales, while men scored significantly higher on the manageability subscales, consistent with a former study [36]. Men present more practical and applied coping values than women, who find more meaning and understanding in what is happening, finding a meaning that allows them to deal better with stressful situations [37]. However, despite the significant values in the SOC variable, this has not played any relevant role in the predictive model, unlike other studies [38,39]. It is likely that this may be due to the fact that the variables of the coping styles and risk perception scales have displaced this other scale when it comes to coping with the situation, a fact that is corroborated by studies on prevention and health promotion [40,41].
