Measuring parents’ readiness to vaccinate themselves and their children against COVID-19

Franziska Rees (Corresponding author), Mattis Geiger (Corresponding author), Lau Lilleholt (Corresponding author), Ingo Zettler (Corresponding author), Cornelia Betsch (Corresponding author), Robert Böhm (Corresponding author), Oliver Wilhelm (Corresponding author)

Publications: Contribution to journalArticlePeer Reviewed

Abstract

To reach high vaccination rates against COVID-19, children and adolescents should be also vaccinated. To improve childhood vaccination rates and vaccination readiness, parents need to be addressed since they decide about the vaccination of their children. We adapted the 7C of vaccination readiness scale to measure parents’ readiness to vaccinate their children and evaluated the scale in a long and a short version in two studies. The study was first evaluated with a sample of N = 244 parents from the German COVID-19 Snapshot Monitoring (COSMO) and validated with N = 464 parents from the Danish COSMO. The childhood 7C scale showed acceptable to good psychometric properties in both samples and explained more than 80% of the variance in vaccination intentions. Additionally, differences in parents’ readiness to vaccinate their children against COVID-19 were strongly determined by their readiness to vaccinate themselves, explaining 64% of the variance. Vaccination readiness and intentions for children changed as a function of the children's age explaining 93% of differences between parents in their vaccination intentions for their children. Finally, we found differences in correlations of components with self- versus childhood vaccination, as well as between the children's age groups in the prediction of vaccination intentions. Thus, parents need to be targeted in specifically tailored ways, based on the age of their child, to reach high vaccination rates in children. The scale is publicly available in several languages (www.vaccination-readiness.com).

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)3825-3834
Number of pages10
JournalVaccine
Volume40
Issue number29
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 21 Jun 2022

Austrian Fields of Science 2012

  • 501021 Social psychology

Keywords

  • COVID-19
  • Childhood vaccination
  • Parents questionnaire
  • Questionnaire
  • Vaccination readiness
  • Vaccine acceptance
  • KNOWLEDGE
  • INFLUENZA
  • VARIABLES

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