Table 3. Factor loadings for health literacy and beliefs related to hoax, conspiracy theories, and optimism regarding COVID-19.
| Factor 1 | Factor 2 | Factor 3 | Factor 4 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ‘Hoax/conspiracy beliefs’, | ||||||
| 5G radio waves worsen coronavirus symptoms | 0.77 | −0.02 | 0.01 | −0.09 | ||
| The main ingredient of Seirogan is effective against the new type of coronavirus | 0.69 | 0.01 | −0.03 | 0.06 | ||
| Novel coronavirus is sensitive to heat, so we should drink hot water often | 0.66 | 0.03 | −0.03 | 0.05 | ||
| It is a conspiracy of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation | 0.65 | −0.11 | 0.14 | −0.05 | ||
| Novel coronavirus does not really exist | 0.60 | −0.15 | −0.01 | 0.06 | ||
| If we drink tea, we are less susceptible to the novel coronavirus | 0.59 | 0.09 | 0.03 | −0.05 | ||
| Toilet paper is often made in China and is in short supply due to the novel coronavirus | 0.52 | 0.07 | −0.03 | 0.16 | ||
| The outbreak occurred outside China | 0.45 | 0.12 | −0.26 | 0.01 | ||
| ‘Large social impact beliefs’, | ||||||
| The number of patients is increasing, nearly causing a medical collapse | 0.07 | 0.68 | −0.02 | −0.24 | ||
| There is a shortage of medical supplies to fight the novel coronavirus disease | 0.11 | 0.61 | −0.02 | −0.14 | ||
| More companies are going bankrupt as a result of the spread of novel coronavirus disease | −0.21 | 0.59 | 0.05 | 0.16 | ||
| An infection explosion will occur in the near future | −0.03 | 0.55 | −0.03 | 0.15 | ||
| Hospitals accepting patients infected with novel coronavirus are running at a loss | −0.07 | 0.51 | 0.00 | 0.26 | ||
| The number of suicides has increased as a result of the spread of infection by the new coronavirus disease | 0.16 | 0.48 | 0.11 | −0.28 | ||
| Divorce rates increase with the spread of the new coronavirus disease | 0.22 | 0.38 | 0.03 | 0.15 | ||
| ‘China-originated beliefs’, | ||||||
| It is a Chinese conspiracy | 0.06 | −0.07 | 0.86 | −0.06 | ||
| Some country created the virus experimentally | 0.03 | −0.01 | 0.80 | −0.02 | ||
| It spread from a laboratory in Wuhan | −0.15 | 0.12 | 0.69 | 0.08 | ||
| It spread from a bat sold at a seafood market in Wuhan (China) | −0.02 | 0.24 | 0.26 | 0.11 | ||
| ‘Optimism’, | ||||||
| Since July 2020, novel coronaviruses have attenuated | −0.07 | 0.14 | 0.00 | 0.67 | ||
| Mass immunity has already been acquired in Japan | 0.10 | −0.01 | −0.02 | 0.56 | ||
| Japanese are less likely to be severely ill | 0.31 | −0.03 | 0.02 | 0.42 | ||
| There are many open beds for novel coronavirus patients | 0.21 | −0.19 | −0.01 | 0.38 | ||
| The lockdown (city blockade) was a conspiracy by politicians and was not really necessary | 0.27 | −0.08 | 0.06 | 0.35 | ||
| The Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare and the Expert Committee are calling for more preventive measures against infection than necessary to control the population | 0.23 | 0.19 | 0.01 | 0.35 | ||
| BCG vaccine is effective in preventing novel coronavirus disease | 0.19 | 0.05 | 0.08 | 0.34 | ||
| Inner-factor correlation F1 | — | −0.14 | 0.27 | 0.57 | ||
| F2 | — | 0.23 | −0.27 | |||
| F3 | — | 0.19 | ||||
| F4 | — | |||||
Notes.
*
Factor loadings with an absolute value of 0.3 or higher are shown in bold. Items with the highest factor loadings were sorted. *The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin measure of sampling adequacy = 0.90.