Sadi Taha, Mahwish Sindhu, Tareq M. Osaili, Amro A.K Gazawi, Eslam Alhogaraty, Ahmad Albloush, Abdelrahim Nassoura
Human safety needs careful attention to minimize the risks of the COVID-19 pandemic, which signifies a crucial political, scientific, political, and public health concern across the globe. The purposes of this study were to assess the knowledge, attitude, communication, commitment, and behavioral practices of universities’ students in UAE towards COVID-19, and the influences of the students' knowledge and attitude towards COVID-19 on their communication, commitment, and behavioral practices using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM). In this cross-sectional study, 995 university students in UAE completed an online-based questionnaire. In general, the respondents had good COVID-19 knowledge (71.4%), attitude (70%), behavioral practices (77.2%), and very good commitment (80.4 %)., while communication was moderate (67.6%), and it has been found a significant relationship between student’s knowledge and attitude coupled with their behavioral patterns towards the epidemics and pandemic of COVID-19. There was a significant correlation between the knowledge and attitude of students with their behavior towards COVID-19. Significant relationships were found between the COVID-19 knowledge and attitude of the students with their commitment/communication and between communication and commitment of the students with their behavioral practices. The latter variable acted as partial mediators in the relationships between the students' knowledge and attitude with their behavioral practices. The results of this study approved that communication and commitment are important variables in COVID-19 management and preparedness to translate the COVID-19 knowledge and attitude into proactive behavioral practices.