Research Information System
33rd International Congress of Psychology, Praha, Czech Republic, 21 - 26 July 2024, pp.337, (Summary Text)
In 2022, many countries have eased or removedthe COVID-19 measures (e.g. wearing masks)which had been sustained for two years. Thisstudy aimed to investigate the impact of thechange in the national COVID-19 health pol-icy on COVID-19-related emotions, attitudes,and health behaviours in Turkey. The sam-ple consists of 282 (211 Female, 71 male)Turkish participants. Pre-test data were col-lected between February and March 2022. OnMarch 2, 2022, Turkey announced lifting therestrictions on Covid-19. The second data wereobtained one and a half months after this offi-cial declaration. Data were collected onlineusing a sociodemographic information form,Health Anxiety Inventory, Attitude towardsCOVID-19 Vaccines Scale, Protective HealthBehaviour Scale, and COVID-19 Fear Ques-tionnaire. A paired sample t-test was used tocompare within-group mean scores. The find-ings indicated a significant decrease in pro-tective health behaviours (e.g. washing hands)and COVID-19 fear of participants after themeasures were lifted. In addition, the Gen-eral linear model for repeated measures was used to test the interaction effect between gen-der and change in the COVID-19 health pol-icy on the study measures. It was revealedthat interaction was observed only for pro-tective health behaviour. Specifically, femaleshad higher protective health behaviours thanmales at first, but after the change of healthpolicy toward ending the measures, therewere no gender-related differences in terms ofprotective health behaviours. According to ourresults, the removal of the measures led to achange in protective health behaviours (e.g.washing hands), while reducing the fear ofCovid-19. The results seem important in termsof the power of health policies to influence pub-lic behaviour and public healt