The Role of Health Locus of Control and Death Anxiety in predicting Self-Care Behaviors related to the COVID-19 in University Students

Coronavirus disease 2019 is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). the prevalence of this Virus has had a variety of effects on different people in the community, with some people exhibiting a higher rate of self-care behaviors that can point to a variety of reasons. The aim of this study was to investigate the role of Health Locus of Control and Death Anxiety in predicting self-care behaviors related to the COVID-19 in the student population of Tehran.

Methods and Materials:

The present study was descriptive-correlation with predictive method. The statistical population of the present study was all students in Tehran in the academic year 1401-1400. Among them, 478 people were selected for the research sample by available sampling method and evaluated online with the Multiple Health Locus of Control scale (1978) and Death Anxiety scale (1970) through the social networks. Then, the obtained data were analyzed by Pearson correlation and stepwise regression via statistical package for social sciences version 26.

The results showed that there are positive and significant relationship between internal locus of control, locus of control related to powerful others and death anxiety with self-care behaviors (p<0.01) and there is a negative and significant relationship (p<0.05) between locus of control related to chance and self-care behaviors. Also, the results of stepwise regression analysis showed that research variables can only explain and predict 14% of the variance of the self-care behaviors of students in Tehran.

In general, the findings of this study confirmed the more prominent role of the locus of control related to powerful others in predicting self-care behaviors related to the COVID-19 in students.