Evaluation of Preventive, Supportive and Awareness Building Measures among International Students in China in Response to COVID-19: A Structural Equation Modeling Approach

Abstract

Background:To prevent dissemination of COVID-19 among international students in China, educational institutions promptly took various preventive, supportive and awareness building measures like restricting outdoor activities, wearing mask, every day health reporting and so on. Success of such behavioral change campaigns largely depends on awareness building, satisfaction and trust on the authorities. The objective of this current study is to evaluate the preventive, supportive and awareness building measures taken for the international students in China during COVID-19 pandemic which will be helpful in designing such behavioral change campaign in other parts of the world in the future pandemic situation.Methods:In this study, we have evaluated how the level of awareness, satisfaction, and trust in authorities (i.e., government, local authorities, and institutions) shapes the behavior and close interconnection each other. Simple bivariate statistics was used to describe the background characteristics of the respondents along with adoption of the partial least squares-structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) as the final model to show the association between the variables.Results:Our study findings showed the great impact of preventive and supportive measures in the development of students’ satisfaction (R2 = 0.507 indicating moderate relationship). The satisfied students possessed a strong influence which eventually helped in building sufficient trust on their institutions (R2 = 0.797 indicating above substantial relationship). The extents of the R2 values were found significant in our model. Moreover, present study provides insight views of the selected latent variables by counteracting the interaction among them.Conclusions:The worldwide student group is one of the most affected and vulnerable communities in this situation. So, there is a profound ground of research on how different states or authorities handle such situation. In this study we have depicted the types and magnitude of care taken by Chinese government and educational institutions towards international students to relieve the panic of pandemic situation. Further research and such initiatives should be taken in to consideration for future emerging conditions.

International student perceptions of online medical education during the COVID‐19 epidemic

“…The Covid‐19 pandemic required many countries to take measures to reduce the spread of the virus and relieve the panic it caused 1 . Many international students studying in China have returned to their homelands due to the epidemic, and are now unable to return.…”

“…The Covid-19 pandemic required many countries to take measures to reduce the spread of the virus and relieve the panic it caused. 1 Many international students studying in China have returned to their homelands due to the epidemic, and are now unable to return. With clinical medicine highly popular among international students, online teaching has become the "new normal" in medical colleges across the country.…”