Can Face- and Smartphone-Touching Behaviors Be Altered with Personal Hygiene Reminders during the COVID-19 Pandemic Period? An Observational Study

Abstract

As part of the new measures to prevent the spread of the 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19), medical students were advised to wear a mask in class and avoid touching their faces. Few studies have analyzed the influence of health education on the frequency of face- and smartphone-touching behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic. This research compared the frequency of in-class face- and smartphone-touching behaviors of medical students before and after the delivery of personal hygiene education during the COVID-19 pandemic. A behavioral observational study was conducted involving medical students at Taipei Medical University. Eighty medical students were recruited during a lecture on otorhinolaryngology. All medical students were required to wear a mask. Their face- and smartphone-touching behavior was observed by viewing the 4k resolution video tape recorded in class. The recording lasted for 2 h, comprising 1 h prior to the health educational reminder and 1 h afterwards. The frequencies of hand-to-face contact and hand-to-smartphone contact were analyzed before and after the delivery of health education emphasizing personal hygiene. Comprehensive health education and reminders effectively reduce the rate of face- and smartphone-touching behaviors.

Reminder design and childhood vaccination coverage

“…Our paper contributes to three streams of the literature: First, a large literature studies reminders and recall systems in a wide range of settings, such as health care, charity donations or financial decision making. Recent examples within the area of health behaviors include studies on the impact of reminders related to COVID-19 to foster vaccination uptake and social distancing (Dai et al, 2021;Li et al, 2021;Falco and Zaccagni, 2021;Cappelen et al, 2021;Chang et al, 2021). In line with the findings in this existing literature, we find that reminders can stimulate desired health behaviors at modest costs.…”