A Cross-Sectional Survey of Knowledge, Attitude, and Practices (KAP) Toward Pandemic COVID-19 Among the General Population of Jammu and Kashmir, India.

Awareness and comprehension of disease origin, transmission, and control in a health crisis are mainly affected by the knowledge, attitude, and practices (KAP) of the general public. We conducted the current study to assess KAP among the general population of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), India, based on an online cross-sectional survey. Participants completed a questionnaire we developed consisting of KAP questions. We also collected sociodemographic information and source of information about disease awareness. The main source of information regarding COVID-19 was Internet social media (66.3%) followed by TV (17.4%). We conducted nonparametric analyses on KAP scores using a Mann-Whitney U and Kruskall-Wallis H tests (P < .05) to find out the association with sociodemographic characteristics. The overall knowledge score (correct answer) was 88.9%, which was significantly associated with gender, age, qualification, and occupation. The positive attitude score was 73.3%, which was significantly associated with gender, age, qualification, marital status, and geographic area. Overall, 93.0% positive practices were observed in the general population based on asked questions. These scores were significantly associated with gender, age, qualification, marital status, area, and occupation. On the basis of the Spearmen correlation test (P < .01), a significant correlation was observed between scores of knowledge and attitude, with rs = +0.28, P = .000, knowledge and practices scores as rs = +0.24, P = .000, and attitude and practices scores as rs = +0.24, P = .000. However, due to the limited sample presentation in the survey, the study is unable to generalize to lower socioeconomic communities.