The Role of Attitudes About Vaccine Safety, Efficacy, and Value in Explaining Parents’ Reported Vaccination Behavior

Abstract

Confidence in the value of vaccines is a helpful predictor of parent-reported vaccination behavior. Attitudinal constructs of confidence in the safety and efficacy of vaccines failed to account for additional significant variance in parents' vaccination behaviors. Future research should assess the role of vaccine knowledge and tangible barriers, such as access and cost, to further explain parents' vaccination behaviors.

Assessing the State of Vaccine Confidence in the United States: Recommendations from the National Vaccine Advisory Committee

“…12 Further analyses of these data showed that two factors -confidence in vaccine safety and confidence in vaccine effectiveness-were a major influence on parents' self-reported vaccination behavior. 13 Overall, however, these studies also suggested that about one in five parents were not fully confident in the safety or importance of recommended vaccinations. 12,13 The Cultural Cognition Project at the Yale Law School has collected data involving or related to confidence and found that about 27% of adults strongly to slightly disagreed with the statement, "I am confident in the judgment of public health officials who are responsible for identifying generally recommended childhood vaccinations."…”

“…13 Overall, however, these studies also suggested that about one in five parents were not fully confident in the safety or importance of recommended vaccinations. 12,13 The Cultural Cognition Project at the Yale Law School has collected data involving or related to confidence and found that about 27% of adults strongly to slightly disagreed with the statement, "I am confident in the judgment of public health officials who are responsible for identifying generally recommended childhood vaccinations." About 62% had moderately or extremely high confidence in "the judgment of the American Academy of Pediatrics that vaccines are a safe and effective way to prevent serious disease," but about 20% had relatively low confidence.…”

Public Understanding of Ebola Risks: Mastering an Unfamiliar Threat

“…As noted above, after reporting results preserving the oversampling, we report on reweighting them to reflect a nationally representative sample. In post‐hoc analyses, we examine correlations between risk judgments and self‐reported gender, age, education, income, and political conservatism, as individual and demographic differences that are often related to risk‐ and health‐related behaviors . The Supporting Information provides additional details.…”

“…In posthoc analyses, we examine correlations between risk judgments and self-reported gender, age, education, income, and political conservatism, as individual and demographic differences that are often related to risk-and health-related behaviors. (28)(29)(30)(31)(32) The Supporting Information provides additional details.…”

What are the factors that contribute to parental vaccine-hesitancy and what can we do about it?

“…20 For VHPs, barriers to vaccination have been well described, 13,18,[21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38] and most barriers are centered on concerns about vaccine safety. Surveys or interviews conducted with VHPs have found that VHPs are more likely to state that vaccines are not safe.…”