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.