Factor That Affect The Level of Awareness Among Malaysian Toward The COVID-19 Pandemic: A Structural Equation Modeling Approach

Abstract

Many countries, including Malaysia, are severely impacted by the Covid-19 outbreak. In Malaysia, many efforts were drastically taken to mitigate the Covid-19 outbreak such as lockdown, movement control order, or shelter in place orders. However, the effectiveness of these mitigation measures is highly dependent on the cooperation and compliance from everyone. The knowledge, attitude, and people’s behaviour toward Covid-19 are integral in determining Malaysians’ readiness in accepting the new norm. This research aimed to assess the factors that influence the level of awareness toward Covid-19 among Malaysian by measuring knowledge, attitude, and behaviour using an online survey. Convenience sampling method was used for data collection, and 410 responses were collected from the online survey. The online survey was conducted between March and April 2020. The survey instrument consisted of 5 parts which are demographic characteristics, 16 items on knowledge, 6 items on attitudes, 8 items on behaviour, and 5 items on awareness which were modified from the previous studies. This study was tested using structural equation modelling (SEM) using AMOS.  This study aims to investigate the effect of the level of awareness of Covid-19 on knowledge, attitude, and behaviour among Malaysians. Thus, the findings showed that a majority of Malaysians possess awareness towards Covid-19. Although the results are significant, it is suggested that Malaysians should continue to strengthen their knowledge, attitude, behaviour, and the level of awareness toward Covid-19 to win the battle against the Covid-19 pandemic.