The relationship between the knowledge levels and the anx-iety levels of pregnant women about COVID-19

This descriptive research was conducted to examine the relationship between the knowledge levels of pregnant women about COVID-19 and their anxiety levels. The research was conducted online on social media (Facebook, Instagram) between 15 No-vember 2020 and 15 May 2021. A total of 275 pregnant women were included in the study. Descriptive analyses were conducted in order to provide information about the general characteristics of the research group. The data of continuous variables are given as mean±standard deviation (X±SD) and min-max. According to whether it fulfills the parametric assumptions in the comparisons between the groups of continuous variables; In case of the number of group is two , Independent Two-Sample T-Test or Mann-Whitney U-Test was used, and in case of group's number is more than two One-Way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) or Kruskal Wallis One-Way Analysis of Variance was used. Pearson correlation analysis was performed to examine the relationship between the research variables. It was found that 61.8% of the pregnant women participating in the study were in the age group of 20-29 years and 68.4% had a university or higher education level. 64.0% of pregnant women were in primigravida, 46.9% were in the sec-ond trimester and 79.6% stated that their pregnancy was planned. It was found that 94.5% of pregnant women received information about COVID-19, 25.8% received in-formation from TV, 17.1% from health workers and 45.1% from the internet. In the study, the mean total knowledge score of pregnant women was 20.45±3.38, and the mean score of the Coronavirus Anxiety Scale (CAS) was 2.59±3.47. In this study, it was found that dysfunctional anxiety related to COVID-19 was present in 8.4% of pregnant women with a KAÖ cut-off score of ≥ 9, and in 20.4% of pregnant women with a KAÖ cut-off score of ≥5 . There was no significant relationship between the mean total knowledge score of the pregnant women and the CAS score (p>0.05). In line with the findings, in this study; It was concluded that the knowledge levels of pregnant women about COVID-19 are higher than average and anxiety levels are low, there is no relationship between the level of knowledge about COVID-19 and anxiety level.