3.5 Attitudes, perception, and practice towards antibiotics use and its resistance
Other than accessing the knowledge, the outcomes concerning the attitude, perception, and practice of respondents on antibiotic usage were analyzed using 5 points Likert’s scale response from agree strongly to disagree. After dichotomizing the 5-point Likert scale, the responses such as “agree strongly” and “agree slightly” were computed to get Net Positive Responses (NPR) while the responses such as “neither agree nor disagree”, “disagree slightly” and “disagree strongly” were combined to get Net Other Response (NOR). The positive response rate was calculated by dividing the NPR by total response rate and multiply by 100. In this study, chi-square test was performed to evaluate whether these proportion differences between NPR and NOR. A p value ≤0.05 was considered as statistically significance. The details are summarized in table 6.
Indeed, it showed moderate to good overall attitudes and perception on the use of antibiotics and its resistance among the respondents. Apart from “there is not much I can do to stop antibiotic resistance” and “I am not at risk of getting antibiotic resistance bacteria as long as I take the antibiotics correctly”, other items showed more positive responses. In addition, almost all the respondents (n = 112, 99.12%) agreed with the statement “parents should make sure their children’s vaccination are up-to-date” and “doctors should only prescribe antibiotics when they are needed”. However, a minority of them are not aware of their roles and responsibilities (n = 65, 57%) towards antibiotics usage and think that there is not much they can do to stop the emergence of AR (n = 23, 20.35%).