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Parental refusal and hesitancy of vaccinating children against COVID-19: Findings from a nationally representative sample of parents in the U.S.

The uptake rate of COVID−19 vaccines among children remains low in the U.S. This study aims to 1) identify sociodemographic and behavioral factors influencing parental refusal of vaccinating children, and 2) quantify the relative importance of vaccine characteristics in parental hesitancy of vaccina...

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Autores principales: Panchalingam, Thadchaigeni, Shi, Yuyan
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Elsevier Inc. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9549707/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36228873
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ypmed.2022.107288
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author Panchalingam, Thadchaigeni
Shi, Yuyan
author_facet Panchalingam, Thadchaigeni
Shi, Yuyan
author_sort Panchalingam, Thadchaigeni
collection PubMed
description The uptake rate of COVID−19 vaccines among children remains low in the U.S. This study aims to 1) identify sociodemographic and behavioral factors influencing parental refusal of vaccinating children, and 2) quantify the relative importance of vaccine characteristics in parental hesitancy of vaccinating children. An online survey was conducted from October to November 2021 among a probability-based, representative sample of 1456 parents with children under age 18. The survey included a discrete choice experiment asking parents to choose between two hypothetical COVID-19 vaccine alternatives with varying levels of characteristics in 10 hypothetical scenarios. Logistic regressions were used to estimate parental refusal (refused to choose any vaccine alternatives in all hypothetical scenarios) and random parameter logit regressions were used to estimate parental hesitancy (choice of vaccine alternatives depended on vaccine characteristics) of vaccinating children. About 20% parents refused to vaccinate children. The refusal is predicted by parents' sociodemographic characteristics, political orientation, vaccination status, and parents' and children's previous exposure with COVID-19. Among parents who were willing to consider vaccinating children, the most important vaccine characteristics are risk of severe side effects (31.2% relative importance) and effectiveness (30.7%), followed by protection duration (22.6%), local coverage (9.4%), and hospitalization rate of unvaccinated children (6.1%). Our findings imply that policymakers and public health professionals could develop outreach programs at community level to encourage specific subgroups and focus on vaccination depoliticization. Effectively communicating the low risk of severe side effects and high effectiveness of the vaccines may relieve some of the parental hesitancy.
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spelling pubmed-95497072022-10-11 Parental refusal and hesitancy of vaccinating children against COVID-19: Findings from a nationally representative sample of parents in the U.S. Panchalingam, Thadchaigeni Shi, Yuyan Prev Med Article The uptake rate of COVID−19 vaccines among children remains low in the U.S. This study aims to 1) identify sociodemographic and behavioral factors influencing parental refusal of vaccinating children, and 2) quantify the relative importance of vaccine characteristics in parental hesitancy of vaccinating children. An online survey was conducted from October to November 2021 among a probability-based, representative sample of 1456 parents with children under age 18. The survey included a discrete choice experiment asking parents to choose between two hypothetical COVID-19 vaccine alternatives with varying levels of characteristics in 10 hypothetical scenarios. Logistic regressions were used to estimate parental refusal (refused to choose any vaccine alternatives in all hypothetical scenarios) and random parameter logit regressions were used to estimate parental hesitancy (choice of vaccine alternatives depended on vaccine characteristics) of vaccinating children. About 20% parents refused to vaccinate children. The refusal is predicted by parents' sociodemographic characteristics, political orientation, vaccination status, and parents' and children's previous exposure with COVID-19. Among parents who were willing to consider vaccinating children, the most important vaccine characteristics are risk of severe side effects (31.2% relative importance) and effectiveness (30.7%), followed by protection duration (22.6%), local coverage (9.4%), and hospitalization rate of unvaccinated children (6.1%). Our findings imply that policymakers and public health professionals could develop outreach programs at community level to encourage specific subgroups and focus on vaccination depoliticization. Effectively communicating the low risk of severe side effects and high effectiveness of the vaccines may relieve some of the parental hesitancy. Elsevier Inc. 2022-11 2022-10-10 /pmc/articles/PMC9549707/ /pubmed/36228873 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ypmed.2022.107288 Text en © 2022 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.
spellingShingle Article
Panchalingam, Thadchaigeni
Shi, Yuyan
Parental refusal and hesitancy of vaccinating children against COVID-19: Findings from a nationally representative sample of parents in the U.S.
title Parental refusal and hesitancy of vaccinating children against COVID-19: Findings from a nationally representative sample of parents in the U.S.
title_full Parental refusal and hesitancy of vaccinating children against COVID-19: Findings from a nationally representative sample of parents in the U.S.
title_fullStr Parental refusal and hesitancy of vaccinating children against COVID-19: Findings from a nationally representative sample of parents in the U.S.
title_full_unstemmed Parental refusal and hesitancy of vaccinating children against COVID-19: Findings from a nationally representative sample of parents in the U.S.
title_short Parental refusal and hesitancy of vaccinating children against COVID-19: Findings from a nationally representative sample of parents in the U.S.
title_sort parental refusal and hesitancy of vaccinating children against covid-19: findings from a nationally representative sample of parents in the u.s.
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9549707/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36228873
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ypmed.2022.107288
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