Highlights
- •Hesitant parents are more likely to conduct intra-family discussion on vaccination.
- •They are also more likely to have disagreements regarding vaccination.
- •Jewish parents are more likely to be vaccination-hesitant.
- •Muslim parents are more likely to be pro-vaccination.
- •Risk must be communicated to all groups, including those who are pro-vaccination.
Background
Vaccine compliance has long been a cause for concern for health authorities throughout
the world. However very little effort has been made to examine parental discourse
during the decision-making process.
Methods
An online survey was conducted (N = 437) to examine predictors of parents' attitudes
regarding childhood vaccination.
Results
Hesitant parents were 4 times more likely to conduct intrafamily discussion regarding
vaccination compared with provaccination parents (Exp[B] = 4.26). There were no significant
differences between hesitant and antivaccination parents with respect to intrafamily
discussion. Hesitant parents were also 4 times more likely than provaccination parents
to report intrafamily disagreements regarding vaccination (Exp[B] = 4.27). They were
also twice as likely as antivaccination parents to express disagreements regarding
vaccination within their families (Exp[B] = 2.33). Likewise, Jewish parents were significantly
more likely to define themselves as vaccination-hesitant, whereas Muslim parents were
significantly more likely to be provaccination.
Conclusions
To improve the way health organizations communicate information about vaccines and
increase parental trust in immunization programs, we should not only look at the level
of understanding, perceptions, and biases of different groups, but also thoroughly
examine parents' decision-making processes and the discourse during this process.
We must communicate risk to all groups, including the provaccination group, to improve
parents' decision making and the process of informed consent.
Key Words
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Article Info
Publication History
Published online: November 14, 2016
Footnotes
This research was conducted with funding from the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement ASSET (Action plan on Science in Society related issues in Epidemics and Total pandemics) No. 612236 .
Conflicts of interest: None to report.
Identification
Copyright
© 2017 Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology, Inc. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
