Relationship Between Primary School Teachers' COVID‐19 Fear Levels and COVID‐19 Vaccine Attitudes After the Start of Face‐to‐Face Education During the Pandemic Period: A School Health Study.

Tayhan, Ali; Işık, Kübra

Context: Starting face‐to‐face education while the COVID‐19 pandemic was ongoing was a risk for public health. Determining teachers' initial reactions to public health practices during this high‐risk period may contribute to the redesign of public health and school nursing policies. Objective: The aim of this research is to examine the relationship between primary school teachers' COVID‐19 fear levels and COVID‐19 vaccine attitudes. Design: The research has a descriptive correlational design. The data were obtained from teachers working in primary schools (n = 430). Simple random sampling method was used in the data collection process. Data were obtained with the Scale of Attitudes Towards COVID‐19 Vaccine and Fear of COVID‐19 Scale. Results: In the study, 50.5% of teachers reported that they were afraid of catching COVID‐19, 41.9% said their risk of catching COVID‐19 was "high," and 87.7% reported that they voluntarily got the COVID‐19 vaccine. Of the teachers, 4.6% (n = 20) stated that they regretted getting vaccinated. A positive and significant relationship was found between teachers' Fear of COVID‐19 Scale and COVID‐19 Vaccine Attitude Scale scores (r = 0.133, p < 0.001). Conclusions: During the pandemic, it was observed that teachers' fear level of COVID‐19 increased with the start of face‐to‐face education. In addition, it is seen that teachers started to have doubts about some public health practices. This may indicate that public health nurses should take a more active role in school health practices.

TURKEY; FEAR; STATISTICAL correlation; EFFECT sizes (Statistics); PSYCHOLOGY of teachers; ELEMENTARY schools; ATTITUDES toward illness; RESEARCH funding; T-test (Statistics); DATA analysis; VACCINATION; STATISTICAL sampling; KRUSKAL-Wallis Test; COVID-19 vaccines; TEACHING methods; DESCRIPTIVE statistics; MANN Whitney U Test; ATTITUDE (Psychology); RESEARCH methodology; RESEARCH; ONE-way analysis of variance; STATISTICS; PUBLIC health nursing; DATA analysis software; COVID-19 pandemic; COVID-19

Public Health Nursing, 2025, Vol 42, Issue 1, p113

0737-1209

Academic Journal

10.1111/phn.13469