The Concept of COVID-19 Preventive Behaviors from Iranian Men’s Perspective: A Qualitative Study

The COVID-19 pandemic has directly and indirectly affected people in different countries. Recognizing individual and social patterns of behavior among communities is very effective in designing and implementing prevention models.

The aim of this study was to identify individual and social preventive behaviors associated with COVID-19 in Iranian men in 2022.

Data were collected using in-depth unstructured interviews with 15 Iranian men in 2022. Participants were selected using purposive sampling. The qualitative data were analyzed using directed content analysis.

In total, 939 primary codes were extracted from the interviews upon analysis. Overall, 5 themes, 13 categories, and 38 sub-categories were obtained after analyzing the collected codes. The themes included emotional perception of COVID-19, COVID-19 awareness, perceived barriers to COVID-19 prevention, perceived social measures for COVID-19 prevention, and individual actions taken to prevent COVID-19. Categories included negative feelings toward COVID-19, no worries about COVID-19, nature of the disease, disease recovery, disease symptoms, routes of transmission, diagnostic methods, individual barriers to COVID-19 prevention, social barriers to COVID-19 prevention, improving social skills and behaviors, revising the rules and reforming infrastructure, using personal protective equipment, and prevention by following healthcare programs.

Certain recommendations and challenges for COVID-19 prevention were reported by Iranian men. Some of the barriers to COVID-19 prevention were related to social behaviors, and others were related to managerial policies and infrastructure reform. Understanding People’s experiences and opinions about COVID-19 can provide potential benefits for preventing this disease.