Investigation of the relationship between knowledge, attitude and anxiety levels of COVID-19 and healthy lifestyle behaviors of students studying at university

This research was carried out to examine the relationship between the knowledge, attitudes and anxiety levels of students studying at a foundation university and healthy lifestyle behaviors. The research was conducted in descriptive and cross-sectional type. It consists of 341 undergraduate and associate degree students who meet the inclusion criteria of all undergraduate and associate degree students at Yeditepe University in Istanbul between 15 March 2022 and 15 May 2022. Data were collected online using the Sociodemographic Information Form (50 questions), the Healthy Lifestyle Behaviors Scale II (52 items), and the Epidemic Anxiety Scale (30 items). The statistics of the study were performed using NCSS, standard deviation, median, Mann Whitney U test, Kruskal Wallis test and Spearman correlation test. It was determined that the mean age of the participants was 21.72±2.49, 58.7% (200) were female, 41.3% (141) were male, and 97.7% (333) were single. At the end of the study; The mean COVID-19 Knowledge Questionnaire Score was 8.84±2.52, the COVID-19 Attitude Questionnaire average 9.28±2.93, the Healthy Lifestyle Behaviors II Score average 2.53±0.54, and the Epidemic Anxiety Scale mean 40.96±17.12. A moderately significant relationship was found between the COVID-19 information questionnaire and the COVID-19 attitude questionnaire (r=.425, p<0.01).In COVID-19 attitude measures, a weak correlation was found with the Healthy Lifestyle Behaviors Scale II (r=.176, p<0.01), and a weak correlation with the Epidemic Anxiety Scale (r=-.111, p<0.05).No statistically significant correlation was found between the Healthy Lifestyle Behaviors Scale II and the Epidemic Anxiety Scale (p>0.05).