Risk-Factors and Behavioral Aspects of COVID-19 in Higher Education

 

Motivation and Objectives

The purpose of the present study was to collect data about the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on members of the University of Koblenz in order to understand the contextual aspects of a University environment related to COVID-19 infections and the behavior of university members in the pandemic period.

To ensure privacy, the data was examined for identifiability of individual persons. Anonymization procedures (K-anonymity) have been applied after aggregation. No materially relevant data was omitted.

Finding I: Increasing household size decreases chances of avoiding an infection

  • The first row shows how many percent of the various household sizes successfully avoided an infection.
  • The explanation lies in the fact that larger households have more contacts in total and therefore a higher chance to import an infection into the household, thereby infecting other members.
  • This finding is also in line with theoretical research (Doenges et al. 2023).

Finding II: Smokers are less susceptible for COVID-19 infections

  • The first column shows the percentage of smokers were able to avoid an infection.
  • Although the numbers of smokers is small, this finding conforms to other empirical research (Paleiron et al. 2021).
  • (Please be reminded that smoking can be highly addictive and pose a danger to your health).

Finding III: Increasing vaccinations, increases the chance to avoid an infection

  • The first row shows how many percent were able to avoid an infection relative to the number of vaccinations (ignoring the first and last column due to small counts).
  • The finding is explained by the vaccine efficacy but also by behavioral factors, as a factor analysis shows that vaccine acceptance is related to risk-perceptions; which in turn has positive relationship with protective behaviors (De Bruin/Bennett 2020).
Conclusions
  • The study explored some aspects of COVID-19 in the context of higher education and confirms existing theoretical and empirical research from other contexts.
Literature

1. Doenges, P., Götz, T., Krueger, T., Niedzielewski, K., Priesemann, V., & Schaefer, M. (2023). SIR-Model for Households. arXiv preprint arXiv:2301.04355.

2. Paleiron, N., Mayet, A., Marbac, V., Perisse, A., Barazzutti, H., Brocq, F. X., … & Bylicki, O. (2021). Impact of tobacco smoking on the risk of COVID-19: a large scale retrospective cohort study. Nicotine and Tobacco Research, 23(8), 1398-1404.

3. De Bruin, W. B., & Bennett, D. (2020). Relationships between initial COVID-19 risk perceptions and protective health behaviors: a national survey. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 59(2), 157-167.