Vaccine Hesitancy: In Search of the Risk Communication Comfort Zone

Conclusions There are some limitations to this study worth noting. First, although the online panel used for our survey is constructed to be representative of the Canadian population in terms of age, region of residence, income and education, selection bias and non-response bias cannot be ruled out. However, the sociodemographic characteristics of our respondents are not significantly different from those of the Canadian population of parents with children aged 5 and younger. Second, the MMR vaccination decision for the child was self-reported by parents which could lead to recall bias, and there was no other measure within the study to assess parental vaccine hesitancy attitudes along a broader spectrum. Hence, as most respondents reported that their child was vaccinated, their reflections on the standard communication messages used by public health to persuade parents about the benefits of vaccination, as well as those suggestions provided by parents that could be persuasive in encouraging parents to vaccinate their children, cannot be expected as being effective specifically for vaccine hesitant parents. Relatedly, messaging deemed to be more acceptable by anti-vaccination parents – namely, public health messaging that both strongly recommends childhood vaccinations while equally expressing empathy and compassion for parental choice – needs further empirical testing, either in an experimental design or through intensive qualitative research. Despite these limitations...
Source: PLOS Currents Outbreaks - Category: Epidemiology Authors: Source Type: research