Participants’ understanding of restrictions, health-seeking behaviours and fear about the health system
| Overall | Age | Gender | Language | |||||||
| <65 | ≥65 | P value | Male | Female | P value | English | Non-English | P value | ||
| Four reasons to leave home—number correctly identified (%) (n=200) | ||||||||||
| Work | 63 (31.5%) | 39 (48.1%) | 24 (20.2%) | <0.001 | 33 (32.0%) | 30 (30.9%) | 0.87 | 25 (29.4%) | 38 (33.0%) | 0.58 |
| Shopping | 158 (79.4%) | 72 (90.0%) | 86 (72.3%) | 0.002 | 79 (77.5%) | 79 (81.4%) | 0.49 | 72 (84.7%) | 86 (75.4%) | 0.11 |
| Exercise | 97 (48.7%) | 44 (55.0%) | 53 (44.5%) | 0.15 | 52 (51.0%) | 45 (46.4%) | 0.52 | 45 (52.9%) | 52 (45.6%) | 0.31 |
| Attend medical* | 131 (65.8%) | 57 (71.3%) | 74 (62.2%) | 0.19 | 63 (61.8%) | 68 (70.1%) | 0.22 | 67 (78.8%) | 64 (56.1%) | <0.001 |
| Has postponed or avoided an appointment/s (n=179) | 70 (35.0%) | 33 (40.7%) | 37 (31.1%) | 0.014 | 32 (31.1%) | 38 (39.2%) | 0.22 | 34 (40.0%) | 36 (31.3%) | 0.001† |
| Fear and worry about the health system being overloaded‡ (n=171) | Mean 4.2 (SD 2) | 4.4 (SD1.8) (n=78) | 4.0 (SD 2.2) (n=93) | 0.48 | 4.1 (SD 2.0) (n=85) | 4.3 (SD 2.1) (n=86) | 0.37 | 4.3 (SD 2.0) (n=81) | 4.1 (SD 2.1) (n=90) | 0.54 |
*Four reasons to leave home were to (1) attend workplace if providing approved essential service, (2) shop for groceries or pharmaceuticals, (3) exercise for 1 hour, (4) attend medical appointment or provide care.
†There was also a statistically significant difference in the number of missing values for English versus non-English speakers (n=6 (7%) vs 21 (18.3%), p<001).
‡Scaled response from 0 to 6, with 0 being no fear and 6 being most fearful or worried you’ve ever been.