An Online Experiment of NHS Information Framing on Mothers’ Vaccination Intention of Children against COVID-19

Abstract

Children under the age of 5, will likely all be offered vaccination against SARS-CoV-2 soon. Parental concerns over vaccination of children are long standing and could impede the success of a vaccination campaign. In the UK, a trusted source to inform vaccination choices is the NHS website. Here we used a randomized controlled experiment of framing effects in NHS information content for COVID-19 and flu with 550 mothers under the age of 5. We compared both vaccination offers following two commonly used frames in vaccination informational campaigns: alerting to the risks of no vaccination for the child itself vs. those in their community. We find that vaccination intention were twice as high when risks to the child are emphasized, relative to risks to the community. Exploratory analyses suggest that these effects may differ between white and non-white mothers. Whilst communication directed at adult vaccination against COVID-19 generally focuses on risks of infecting others, communication about vaccination of children may benefit from emphasizing risks to the children themselves. This pattern is in line with flu vaccination research from pre-COVID-19 times.

Parental attitudes in the pediatric emergency department about the COVID-19 vaccine

“…Limited studies assess parental attitudes towards COVID-19 vaccination using the 4C model of vaccine hesitancy [20] . To our knowledge, no studies have examined the parental attitudes of a primarily Hispanic/Latinx population in an emergency department (ED).…”

Framing Effects on Willingness and Perceptions towards COVID-19 Vaccination among University Students in Italy: An Exploratory Study

“…This was especially true, considering the reduction in the hospitalization rate was substantial and characterized by low variability between vaccines. For example, while the communication of risks of COVID-19 on adults has tended to focus on infecting others, the intention to vaccinate children among a sample of UK respondents doubled when the focus was on the risks of vaccination for the children themselves compared to the local community [ 47 , 48 ].…”

Fear of Illness and Convenient Access to Vaccines Appear to Be the Missing Keys to Successful Vaccination Campaigns: Analysis of the Factors Influencing the Decisions of Hospital Staff in Poland concerning Vaccination against Influenza and COVID-19

“…The results of the study are also consistent with the literature concerning vaccination against COVID-19 in children, which is crucial, considering that it effectively limits the need for hospitalization [ 49 ] but even about a quarter of parents declare that they would definitely not have their children vaccinated unless their school required it [ 50 ]. It has been established that individually targeted risk-oriented communication is crucial to achieve satisfactory results, but in adults the communicates concentrate on the risk of infecting others while in the case of children it may be more effective to focus on the risk resulting from the SARS-CoV-2 infection for themselves [ 51 ].…”