Assessing COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy, Confidence and Public Engagement: A Global Social Listening Study

Hou, Zhiyuan; Tong, Yixin; Du, Fanxing; Lu, Linyao; Zhao, Sihong; Yu, Kexin; Piatek, Simon J.; Larson, Heidi J.; Lin, Leesa

doi:10.2139/ssrn.3775544

Cited by 18 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 32 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Our findings revealed that Confidence, Convenience, and Complacency were statistically significant contributors to vaccine hesitancy, a finding documented in previous literature(34). Bearing this in mind, if policymakers work towards increasing confidence and convenience for the vaccine while decreasing complacency towards vaccine amongst the general population, they can subsequently variate the community’s intention to vaccinate significantly, this can be done by adopting tailored interventions for the context at hand concerning the different groups in the country, an approach supported in previous literature(35).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 83%

Understanding COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in Pakistan: The paradigm of Confidence, Convenience, and Complacency; A Cross-sectional study

Sheikh

Touseef

Sultan

et al. 2021

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Background and objectives: Vaccine hesitancy is a big obstacle for vaccination programs, as is anticipated for the COVID-19 vaccination program, resulting in low uptake of vaccines thereby hindering the process of reaching herd immunity. Bearing this in mind the current study was aimed to explore the determinants of vaccine hesitancy amongst the Pakistani population. Methodology: A cross-sectional study was carried out from the 23rd-31st January 2021. The conceptual framework of the study was based on the 3Cs (Confidence, Convenience, Complacency) model. Google-forms-based questionnaire was disseminated amongst the general population. Data collected were entered into SPSS version 26 and analyzed. Results: Of the 421 participants, 68.4% were females. Non-healthcare workers were 55.8% of respondents. Vaccine hesitant individuals, 26.13% reported they were very unlikely to get vaccinated. Vaccine was not safe as it came out too fast was agreed upon by 12.6% individuals, 50.6% were worried about experiencing side-effects, 18% believed vaccine will not offer protection and 5.9% believed vaccine would cause death. Low Practice of SOP in non-Healthcare workers was the strongest contributor to vaccine hesitancy (OR: 5.338, p=0.040, 95% CI: 1.082-26.330) followed by High complacency (p=0.026) and Moderate Complacency (OR: 0.212, p=0.007, 95% CI: 0.069-0.654) towards COVID-19 vaccination. In Healthcare workers the strongest contributor to vaccine hesitancy was having a Moderate Confidence (OR: 0.323, p=0.042, 95% CI: 0.109-0.958) in the vaccine followed by Moderate Convenience (OR: 0.304, p=0.049, 95% CI: 0.093-0.993) for vaccination Conclusion: Campaigning and communication strategies to reaffirm confidence in the COVID-19 vaccine and educating the general population about the vaccine could lead to increased perception of vaccine safety and effectiveness thereby restoring confidence in vaccine and decreasing vaccine hesitancy. Likewise, working to increase vaccine convenience and decreasing complacency towards the COVID-19 vaccine would translate into high vaccine uptake.

show abstract

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 83%

Understanding COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in Pakistan: The paradigm of Confidence, Convenience, and Complacency; A Cross-sectional study

Sheikh

Touseef

Sultan

et al. 2021

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Some media or websites would exaggerate or make unreliable news, because negative tweets expressing misinformation on vaccine con dence and even rumors, had more followers and attracted more public engagement online (34). Our study highlighted the needs of transparent information about COVID-19 vaccine development, e cacy and safety and the negative roles of misinformation on COVID-19 vaccine in vaccine hesitancy.…”

Section: The Predictors For Covid-19 Vaccine Hesitancy Among Participantsmentioning

confidence: 73%

COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy Among Different Population Groups in China: a National Multi-Center Online Survey

Huang

Xiao

et al. 2021

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Background: COVID-19 vaccine has been available in China since the beginning of the 2021, however, certain numbers of people are reluctant for some reasons to vaccinate. The high vaccine coverage is crucial for controlling disease transmission. Meanwhile, the vaccine hesitancy might be a barrier to the establishment of sufficient herd immunization. This study aims to investigate the prevalence of vaccine hesitancy towards the COVID-19 vaccine among different population groups, and explores the characteristics of different groups about vaccine hesitancy and common barriers and facilitators to vaccination decisions.Methods: The current survey was performed among students, public health professionals, medical workers and general population from January to March 2021 among Chinese from seven cities located in seven geographical territories of China. The questionnaire contained sociodemographic information, concerns about COVID-19 epidemic, general vaccination behavior and attitudes, the General Vaccine Hesitancy Scale, the COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy Scale and other potential factors of vaccine hesitancy. Univariate analysis was conducted by chi-squared test, and variables were significant at P < 0.10 were then included in a multivariable regression model.Results: The prevalence of COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy was 64.1% in our study, and a higher prevalence (73.7%) was in public health professionals compared to students (58.3%), medical workers (64.9%) and general population (61.1%). The results of multivariate analysis indicated that public health professionals were more likely to be hesitant against COVID-19 vaccine than general population (OR: 1.469, 95% CI: 1.069-2.019. And participants who needed transparent information about COVID-19 vaccine development, efficacy and safety (OR: 1.609, 95% CI: 1.343-1.928) and who have received negative information of COVID-19 vaccine (OR: 1.300, 95% CI: 1.130-1.496) were more likely to have vaccine hesitancy.Conclusions: Appropriate training in knowledge and communication skills about vaccines are necessary for public health professionals to help themselves and the public to increase their willingness of vaccination. Reducing the spread of misinformation and disseminating facts in a timely and accurate way will likely reduce vaccine hesitancy. Also, to establish suitable communication strategies between the government and the public and a warning system on infodemic would be helpful to improve public’s confidence in vaccination.

show abstract

“…In contrast, other regions, especially AFR, experienced the declining trends in vaccine acceptance during 2020. Residents of low-and middle-income countries were more concerned with vaccine accessibility than their peers in high-income countries 19,24 . And we also found that many AFR countries worried more about vaccine effectiveness than others.…”

Section: The Proportion Of Tweets Indicating Distrust In Government Experienced An Abrupt Increase Betweenmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…First, around 8000 tweets were manually classified to predefined categories according to the framework of vaccine hesitancy proposed by the World Health Organization (Table 1) 17,18,19 . Each tweet was classified by two independent annotators, and a third annotator resolved disagreements.…”

Section: Development Of Deep Learning Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Monitoring global trends in Covid-19 vaccination intention and confidence: a social media-based deep learning study

Zhou

Figueiredo

et al. 2021

Preprint

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

BackgroundThis study developed deep learning models to monitor global intention and confidence of Covid-19 vaccination in real time.MethodsWe collected 6.73 million English tweets regarding Covid-19 vaccination globally from January 2020 to February 2021. Fine-tuned Transformer-based deep learning models were used to classify tweets in real time as they relate to Covid-19 vaccination intention and confidence. Temporal and spatial trends were performed to map the global prevalence of Covid-19 vaccination intention and confidence, and public engagement on social media was analyzed.FindingsGlobally, the proportion of tweets indicating intent to accept Covid-19 vaccination declined from 64.49% on March to 39.54% on September 2020, and then began to recover, reaching 52.56% in early 2021. This recovery in vaccine acceptance was largely driven by the US and European region, whereas other regions experienced the declining trends in 2020. Intent to accept and confidence of Covid-19 vaccination were relatively high in South-East Asia, Eastern Mediterranean, and Western Pacific regions, but low in American, European, and African regions. 12.71% tweets expressed misinformation or rumors in South Korea, 14.04% expressed distrust in government in the US, and 16.16% expressed Covid-19 vaccine being unsafe in Greece, ranking first globally. Negative tweets, especially misinformation or rumors, were more engaged by twitters with fewer followers than positive tweets.InterpretationThis global real-time surveillance study highlights the importance of deep learning based social media monitoring to detect emerging trends of Covid-19 vaccination intention and confidence to inform timely interventions.FundingNational Natural Science Foundation of China.Research in contextEvidence before this studyWith COVID-19 vaccine rollout, each country should investigate its vaccination intention in local contexts to ensure massive vaccination. We searched PubMed for all articles/preprints until April 9, 2021 with the keywords “(“Covid-19 vaccines”[Mesh] OR Covid-19 vaccin*[TI]) AND (confidence[TI] OR hesitancy[TI] OR acceptance[TI] OR intention[TI])”. We identified more than 100 studies, most of which are country-level cross-sectional surveys, and the largest global survey of Covid-19 vaccine acceptance only covered 32 countries to date. However, how Covid-19 vaccination intention changes over time remain unknown, and many countries are not covered in previous surveys yet. A few studies assessed public sentiments towards Covid-19 vaccination using social media data, but only targeting limited geographical areas. There is a lack of real-time surveillance, and no study to date has globally monitored Covid-19 vaccination intention in real time.Added value of this studyTo our knowledge, this is the largest global monitoring study of Covid-19 vaccination intention and confidence with social media data in over 100 countries from the beginning of the pandemic to February 2021. This study developed deep learning models by fine-tuning a Bidirectional Encoder Representation from Transformer (BERT)-based model with 8000 manually-classified tweets, which can be used to monitor Covid-19 vaccination beliefs using social media data in real time. It achieves temporal and spatial analyses of the evolving beliefs to Covid-19 vaccines across the world, and also an insight for many countries not yet covered in previous surveys. This study highlights that the intention to accept Covid-19 vaccination have experienced a declining trend since the beginning of the pandemic in all world regions, with some regions recovering recently, though not to their original levels. This recovery was largely driven by the US and European region (EUR), whereas other regions experienced the declining trends in 2020. Intention to accept and confidence of Covid-19 vaccination were relatively high in South-East Asia region (SEAR), Eastern Mediterranean region (EMR), and Western Pacific region (WPR), but low in American region (AMR), EUR, and African region (AFR). Many AFR countries worried more about vaccine effectiveness, while EUR, AMR, and WPR concerned more about vaccine safety (the most concerns with 16.16% in Greece). Online misinformation or rumors were widespread in AMR, EUR, and South Korea (12.71%, ranks first globally), and distrust in government was more prevalent in AMR (14.04% in the US, ranks first globally). Our findings can be used as a reference point for survey data on a single country in the future, and inform timely and specific interventions for each country to address Covid-19 vaccine hesitancy.Implications of all the available evidenceThis global real-time surveillance study highlights the importance of deep learning based social media monitoring as a quick and effective method for detecting emerging trends of Covid-19 vaccination intention and confidence to inform timely interventions, especially in settings with limited sources and urgent timelines. Future research should build multilingual deep learning models and monitor Covid-19 vaccination intention and confidence in real time with data from multiple social media platforms.

show abstract

Assessing COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy, Confidence and Public Engagement: A Global Social Listening Study

Cited by 18 publications

References 32 publications

Understanding COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in Pakistan: The paradigm of Confidence, Convenience, and Complacency; A Cross-sectional study

Understanding COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in Pakistan: The paradigm of Confidence, Convenience, and Complacency; A Cross-sectional study

COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy Among Different Population Groups in China: a National Multi-Center Online Survey

Monitoring global trends in Covid-19 vaccination intention and confidence: a social media-based deep learning study

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About