Where do Brazilian dental students seek information about COVID-19?

Objective: We investigated where Brazilian dental students seek information about COVID-19 by a self-administered web-based questionnaire. Methods: A social network campaign on Instagram was raised to approach the target population. The dental students responded to a multiple-response question asking where they get information about COVID-19. The possible answers were government official websites or health and education institutions websites, TV Programs, professors, social media, scientific articles, other health professionals, and family members. The data were analyzed by descriptive statistics and frequency distributions of responses were evaluated by gender, age, type of institution, and year of enrollment. Results: A total of 833 valid responses were received. The main source of information used by the dental students were government official websites or health and education institutions websites (88.7%), other health professionals (57.3%), and scientific articles (56.2%). The use of social media was reported by 54.1% of the students, while TV programs were information sources used by 39.9% of the students. The least used information sources were professors (38.1%) and family members (7.8%). Conclusions: The respondents seem to be acquainted to seek information in reliable sources and also use social media as a gateway to keep updated about the pandemics. Therefore, knowing where the dental students seek information about COVID-19 might facilitate dental school directors to approach such public continuously, providing them with trustable information on different platforms.