• Pınar Atali, Seyhan Hidiroğlu, Alican Sarisaltik, and Melda Karavuş.
• Tuzla District Health Directorate, Republic of Türkiye Ministry of Health, İstanbul, Turkiye.
• Turk J Med Sci. 2024 Jan 1; 54 (5): 9951004995-1004.

Background/AimThe relation between the demographic characteristics of individuals and their health-seeking behaviors was presented and the effects of health cognitions, healthy lifestyle behaviors, and coronavirus fear levels on health-seeking behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic were examined.Materials And MethodsThis descriptive survey study was conducted in the Tuzla District of İstanbul, Türkiye, between March and June 2021.ResultsFrom analysis of the 391 participants, 60.0% were females, 27.1% were between 31 and 40 years of age, 47.0% were healthcare professionals, and the perceived socioeconomic status of 50.9% was above average. According to the results, the women exhibited more health-seeking behavior than the men (p < 0.05). While the young participants showed more online health-seeking behavior (p < 0.05), the older ones showed greater health responsibility (p < 0.05). The participants with a high level of education exhibited traditional health-seeking behavior (p < 0.05) more than the others, and below-low socioeconomic status increased the COVID-19 fear level 1.94 times (95.0% CI: 1.08-3.48). The Health-Seeking Behavior Scale (HSBS) score was related to the Health Cognitions Questionnaire (HCQ) (p < 0.0001) and the Healthy Lifestyle Behaviors Scale-II (HLBS-II) scores (p = 0.002; Table 3). While the HSBS score was positively associated with an increase in the HCQ score and HLBS-II score (p < 0.05), the HSBS score was not significantly related to the Fear of COVID-19 Scale score (p > 0.05).ConclusionWhile fear of COVID-19 was not significantly influential, health cognitions and healthy lifestyle behaviors were the main factors that led to health-seeking behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic.© TÜBİTAK.

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