Effect of False News on Knowledge, Attitude, and Practice toward COVID-19 Pandemic among Educated of Karnataka, India

Background : COVID-19 pandemic has taken millions of lives across the globe. Preventive measures in developing country like India were affected by fake news at some point of time. This created lots of confusion among public which in turn affected their knowledge, attitude, and practice (KAP) toward COVID-19 pandemic. With this context this study was taken up to assess the KAP toward COVID-19 and also to assess the effect of false news on KAP of educates. Materials and Methods : Web-based cross-sectional study was conducted among educates of Karnataka. Google form was sent through WhatsApp and email to collect data. Analysis was performed using IBM SPSS 25.0. Results : A total of 421 participants took part in the study. Major source of information was TV (82.9%) followed by family and friends (71.5%). Mean knowledge, attitude, and practice scores were 12.5 ± 2.49, 3.0 ± 0.67, and 4.7 ± 0.66, respectively. Among the participants 230 (54.6%), 336 (79.8%), and 329 (78.1%) had good knowledge, attitude, and practice scores, respectively. Nearly 60% of participants with good knowledge did not believe in false news and this was found to be statistically significant. Conclusions : Among our participants regarding COVID-19 knowledge score was moderate to low and in contrast attitude and practice scores were good. Key words : COVID-19, False news, Knowledge, Attitude, Practice, Pandemic