How College Students Used Information From Institutions ofHigher Education in the United States During COVID-19:Web-Based Cross-Sectional Survey Study

Background: The start of the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in the implementation of nonpharmaceutical interventions by USinstitutions of higher education at an unprecedented level. During the backdrop of an emerging pandemic, younger adults (eg,college students) had an overall lower risk for severe outcomes for SARS-CoV-2, making this population a potential source oftransmission for age groups with high susceptibility and negative health outcomes. We examine how college students'level ofconcern for COVID-19 was influenced by different sources of information, their living status, income level, and other demographicidentifiers and its association with prevention behavior change.Objective: We sought to examine the level of concern, defined as the extent to which the participant would take correctiveaction to mitigate contracting or spreading the virus (to family or friends) by using personal protective equipment such as a facemask, practicing social distancing, and following other public health recommendations, among college students during theCOVID-19 pandemic.Methods: A cross-sectional, web-based survey was conducted in 2021 among 185 college students aged 18-41 years, with mostliving in New York City and the United States (n=134, 72.4%). Out of 185 college students, 94 provided their zip codes, with51 of those college students indicating they lived in New York City areas. The participants completed the survey via a QR code.Study participants who did not complete the full survey or were not college students in any US college or university were excluded.Analyses were conducted using R (version 4.2.2; R Foundation for Statistical Computing).Results: Of 185 respondents participated in the study, 25 (13.5.%) used emails from their schools, 51 (27.6%) used mainstreammedia, and 109 (58.9%) used social media and other sources to obtain information about COVID-19. Of the 109 participants wholearned about the pandemic from social media, 91 (83.5%) were concerned; however, only 63% (32/51) and 60% (15/25) of theparticipants who sourced information from mainstream media and their schools'email, respectively, were concerned. Further,the participants who received information from social media and other sources were about 3 times more likely to be concernedabout COVID-19 than participants who received information from the university via email (P=.036; OR=3.07, 95% CI: 1.06-8.83)..Conclusions: College students who received information from social media and other sources were more likely to be concernedabout COVID-19 than students who received information from their school via emails