The Concept of COVID-19 Preventive Behaviors from Iranian Men’s Perspective: A Qualitative Study

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has directly and indirectly affected people in different countries. Recognizing individual and social patterns of behavior among communities is very effective in designing and implementing prevention models. Objectives: The aim of this study was to identify individual and social preventive behaviors associated with COVID-19 in Iranian men in 2022. Methods: Data were collected using in-depth unstructured interviews with 15 Iranian men in 2022. Participants were selected using purposive sampling. The qualitative data were analyzed using directed content analysis. Results: In total, 939 primary codes were extracted from the interviews upon analysis. Overall, 5 themes, 13 categories, and 38 sub-categories were obtained after analyzing the collected codes. The themes included emotional perception of COVID-19, COVID-19 awareness, perceived barriers to COVID-19 prevention, perceived social measures for COVID-19 prevention, and individual actions taken to prevent COVID-19. Categories included negative feelings toward COVID-19, no worries about COVID-19, nature of the disease, disease recovery, disease symptoms, routes of transmission, diagnostic methods, individual barriers to COVID-19 prevention, social barriers to COVID-19 prevention, improving social skills and behaviors, revising the rules and reforming infrastructure, using personal protective equipment, and prevention by following healthcare programs. Conclusions: Certain recommendations and challenges for COVID-19 prevention were reported by Iranian men. Some of the barriers to COVID-19 prevention were related to social behaviors, and others were related to managerial policies and infrastructure reform. Understanding People’s experiences and opinions about COVID-19 can provide potential benefits for preventing this disease.