Development of a US trust measure to assess and monitor parental confidence in the vaccine system

Abstract

Objective: To develop a Vaccine Confidence Index (VCI) that is capable of detecting variations in parental confidence towards childhood immunizations centered on trust and concern issues that impact vaccine confidence. Methods: We used a web-based national poll of 893 parents of children <7 years in 2016 to assess the measures created for the Emory VCI (EVCI). EVCI measures were developed using constructs related to vaccine confidence identified by the U.S. National Vaccine Advisory Committee (i.e., “Information Environment”, “Trust”, “Healthcare Provider”, “Attitudes and Beliefs”, and “Social Norms”). Reliability for EVCI was assessed using Cronbach’s alpha. Using the variables related to each of the constructs, we calculated an overall EVCI score that was then assessed against self-reported childhood vaccine receipt using chi-square and the Cochrane-Armitage trend tests. Results: Respondents’ EVCI scores could range from 0 to 24, and the full range of values was observed in this sample (Mean = 17.5 (SD 4.8)). EVCI scores were significantly different (p ≤ 0.006 for all comparisons) between parents who indicated their child(ren) received routinely recommended vaccines compared with parents who indicated they had delayed or declined recommended immunizations. There was also a significant, consistent association between higher EVCI scores and greater reported vaccine receipt. Conclusions: We developed EVCI to reliably measure parental vaccine confidence, with individuals’ scores linked to parental vaccine-related attitudes, intentions, and behaviors. As such, EVCI may be a useful tool for future monitoring of both population and individual confidence in childhood immunization.

COVID-19 Misinformation Trends in Australia: Prospective Longitudinal National Survey

“…f Mean of 4 items, adapted from national Australian survey on vaccination [22]; scale: 1=strongly disagree to 7=strongly agree. g Mean of 3 items adapted from [23]; scale: 1=strongly disagree to 7=strongly agree.…”

Scaling Up the Discovery of Hesitancy Profiles by Identifying the Framing of Beliefs towards Vaccine Confidence in Twitter Discourse

“…Trust in the vaccine literature has commonly been measured with single items (Larson et al, 2018), has often been operationalized by measuring credibility source (Larson et al, 2018;Sutton et al, 2020) but has rarely been operationalized or measured as perceived motivations or erosion of trust or as moral values that align. Only recently has one trust scale been developed that measures parental confidence in source credibility and trust in various sources but also measures the norms that vaccination is important for children, a protective measure that all teenagers should get vaccinated (Frew et al, 2019). These trust expressions on twitter however it is important to remember that they are unsolicited trust expressions as opposed to survey results.…”

Health Behavior Survey Among People Who Use Opioids: Protocol for Implementing Technology-Based Rapid Response Surveillance in Community Settings

“…A description of the content domains and example items are available in Multimedia Appendix 1 (Table S1). Psychometric instruments were drawn from valid and reliable measures: vaccine confidence was assessed using a version of the Emory Vaccine Confidence Index modified for adult vaccination [ 28 ], mental distress was measured using the K6 scale [ 29 ], health literacy assessment used the 3-item scale of Chew et al [ 30 ], and the DUDIT-E instrument was used to measure the motivation to change substance abuse behavior [ 31 ]. Other items were drawn from prior surveys when available and from subject area expertise.…”