COmpliance with pandemic COmmands Scale (COCOS): The relationship between compliance with COVID-19 measures and sociodemographic and attitudinal variables

PLoS One. 2022 Jan 19;17(1):e0262698. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0262698. eCollection 2022.

Abstract

Several studies in different countries have reported that part of the population does not fully comply with the measures recommended to prevent COVID-19, and therefore poses a risk to public health. For this reason, several measures have been developed to assess the level of compliance, although many of them have methodological limitations or do not include a comprehensive set of items. The main goal of the current study was to develop a new instrument with suitable psychometric properties, which includes a more complete set of items and controls the impact of acquiescence bias. The participants were 1410 individuals (59.2% women) from Spain, who answered the new questionnaire and several items on sociodemographic and attitudinal issues. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were carried out, and the results suggested that only one content factor was underlying the data. This solution was replicated in a different subsample, which shows the stability of the solution. Furthermore, the relationships between the scores of the new questionnaire and the sociodemographic and attitudinal variables are similar to those obtained in previous studies, which can be regarded as evidence of the validity of the new questionnaire.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Adolescent
  • Adult
  • Aged
  • Attitude*
  • COVID-19 / epidemiology*
  • COVID-19 / prevention & control
  • COVID-19 / virology
  • Female
  • Health Status
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Middle Aged
  • Pandemics
  • Psychometrics
  • SARS-CoV-2 / isolation & purification
  • Social Class
  • Spain / epidemiology
  • Surveys and Questionnaires
  • Young Adult

Grants and funding

This research was supported by a grant from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitivity (PID2020-112894GB-I00) and a grant from the Catalan Ministry of Universities, Research and the Information Society (2017 SGR 97). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.