Business premises workers’ knowledge, attitude and practice towards COVID-19 and its standard operation procedures

Various preventive and precautionary measures have been put in place by the government of Malaysia to safeguard their citizens against COVID-19 whilst allowing economic activities to operate during the pandemic. Business operators and workers must abide by the Standard Operation Procedure (SOP) for Business Premises imposed by the Government of Malaysia in order to prevent the COVID-19 spread. The success of the mitigation measures depend on the business operators’ and their workers’ adherence to the SOP, which is influenced by their knowledge, attitude and practices toward COVID-19 prevention. Therefore, this study was conducted to assess COVID-19 related knowledge, attitude, and preventive practices amongst workers within business premises operating in the districts of Ranau and Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia. In addition, this study also aimed to identify the contributing factors to good practices towards COVID19 SOP. Data collection based on convenience sampling was conducted through guided surveys using questionnaires distributed on site within July to September 2020, during which, 147 workers from various food services and grocery business premises participated. A descriptive analysis was carried out to closely investigate any specific pattern in the responses given by the respondents. Spearman's rho correlation test was performed to determine the relationship between knowledge, attitude and practices. Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis tests were conducted on knowledge, attitude and practice according to demographic factors in order to identify any significant difference toward COVID-19 SOP. Finally, a stepwise multiple regression was performed in order to identify the contributing factors towards good practices of COVID-19 SOP. The results of the analyses revealed that practice and attitude of the respondents were significantly linear moderate positive correlated whereas knowledge and attitude had low positive correlation. There was no statistical evidence of linear correlation between practice and knowledge scores. Interestingly, the results indicate a significant difference in the total score of attitude and practice with respect to the respondents’ level of education but not to other demographic factors. Attitude, job position and level of education were identified as significant predictors for the good practice of COVID-19 SOP. Findings of this study suggest that many of the business workers are aware of the related practices for COVID-19 preventi