Introduction: The outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) began in Guangdong, China in November 2002 and spread to Hong Kong around March 2003. It stopped spreading in July of the same year. However, a sense of crisis toward potential new infections may exist in epidemic areas. “College-prep students” are regarded as a high-risk group as a source of infection because of certain factors, such as the differences in linguistic capabilities and their customs. The purpose of this study was to clarify the knowledge, attitude, and behavior toward SARS, and also to collect the information as baseline data for the control of emerging infectious diseases toward them.
Methods: We conducted a self-administered questionnaire to 303 “college-prep students” from June 27 to July13, 2003. For statistical analyses, the chi-square test, t-test and factor analysis were used.
Results: The average age of subjects was 22.8 years for males, and 22.6 years for females. The majority of subjects was from China (76.8%, n= 218), and had only stayed in Japan less than one year (70.9%, n= 205). Most subjects were knowledgeable of the symptoms of and preventative measures for SARS. There were no significant differences in knowledge, attitude, and behavior items between students from epidemic areas and those from non-epidemic areas. However, we observed a statistically significant difference in the proportion of subjects in the two groups stratified by information source: radio (p<0.01) and family (p<0.05), where the proportion was higher in epidemic areas than in non-epidemic areas. Three factors were extracted by factor analysis on information sources, which suggested an inverse correlation for language and frequency of communication.
Conclusions: This study clarified the knowledge, attitude, and behavior toward SARS for “college-prep students”. These findings must be useful for the control against emerging infectious diseases.