Knowledge and Practice of Parents Towards Measles, Mumps and Rubella Vaccination

BACKGROUND: Measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccination is the safest and most effective way of protecting children from three potentially fatal diseases and yet, high numbers of children remained unimmunised. OBJECTIVE: The study aimed to determine the parents’ knowledge and practice regarding MMR vaccination and examine its associations. METHODS: This is a cross-sectional study conducted among the 202 parents in Selangor Malaysia using simple random sampling. The parents’ knowledge and practice regarding MMR vaccination were measured using the modified self-administered questionnaire developed by Awadh et al. The data were analysed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences Statistic for Windows (version 23.0) and the significant level (P) was set at P < 0.05. RESULTS: Overall, 53.5% of parents had low knowledge of MMR vaccination, 35.1% had moderate knowledge and 11.4% had high knowledge of MMR vaccination. Meanwhile, 54.5% had good practice of MMR vaccination and 45.4% reported they had not practised immunising their children with the MMR vaccine. The number of respondents who had a higher level of knowledge and good MMR vaccination practices was 20.0%. There is a significant association between parental knowledge of MMR vaccination and the practice of immunising their children with the MMR vaccine (P > 0.001). Besides, there was a significant association between the level of knowledge on MMR vaccination with parental education background (χ(2) = 12.06; P = 0.002), number of children (P = 0.040) and a working family (P = 0.030). The Pearson’s chi-squared test showed a significant association between gender (P = 0.040), the number of children (P = 0.05) and level of practice of MMR vaccination. CONCLUSION: The majority of parents have low knowledge of MMR vaccination but they practice good MMR vaccination. It is necessary to consider parents’ level of knowledge when planning the health promotions regarding MMR vaccinations.