Measuring College Student Attitudes Toward COVID-19 Vaccinations

Abstract

This survey explores attitudes of 1,197 currently enrolled college students regarding their comfort taking a COVID-19 vaccine. Results suggest most college students are willing to take a COVID-19 vaccine if their institution requires it to return to campus in subsequent semesters. However, certain students of Color, students with disabilities, and adult students may be hesitant to take a COVID-19 vaccine if it were required before or during an on-campus semester. Finally, many college students do not understand that COVID-19 vaccines will be free, possibly affecting these students’ vaccine hesitancy and willingness to vaccinate, along with their perceptions of safely and affordably returning to campus. Implications for postsecondary policy and leadership are addressed.

Returning at Any Cost? How Black College Students Feel Toward COVID Vaccines and Institutional Mandates

“…From here, it is possible that women students opting to take classes in-person in Fall 2021 were already comfortable with COVID-19 vaccines, but it is troubling that such disparities in vaccine comfort exist between Black men (mean = 3.5/7) and Black women (5.0/7). Moreover, prior research found that African American college students were least aware that COVID-19 vaccines are free (Taylor & Childs, 2021), suggesting that institutions of higher education did not communicate well with this student population, possibly leading to vaccine hesitancy or skepticism among some African American college students. This finding suggests that institutions of higher education could work on building relationships with the African American communities in their region and providing focused communication and healthcare interventions to reach Black men on campus to explore why Black men do not feel as comfortable with COVID-19 vaccines as their women counterparts.…”

“…Secondly, institutions of higher education were fairly criticized for how they communicated campus closure policies, vaccine information, and campus re-opening policies (Redden, 2021; Taylor & Childs, 2021), suggesting that many institutions of higher education were not prepared to manage a scale on the level of the COVID-19 pandemic, much less deliver critical healthcare information (Taylor et al, 2022; Taylor & Childs, 2021). Subsequently, many African American college students may not have felt comfortable on or trusting of their campus community to protect them given historical precedent (Allen, 1988; Love, 1993), and poor campus communication possibly increased this tension.…”

“…MTurk has been found to be a unique and robust source of human intelligence services, including survey completion in educational contexts (Follmer et al, 2017). Several recent studies in education focused on financial aid jargon (Taylor & Bicak, 2020), computer science education (Hellas et al, 2020), and broader COVID-19 vaccine attitudes (Taylor et al, 2022; Taylor & Childs, 2021) have used MTurk to answer research questions that require a large, nationally representative dataset, akin to the study at hand related to college student attitudes toward COVID-19 vaccinations.…”

“…Prior studies investigating African American vaccine hesitancy have explored the intersectionality of African American attitudes toward COVID-19 vaccines by age and ethnicity (Bogart et al, 2022; Momplaisir et al, 2021; Warren et al, 2020), but scant research has not addressed how one’s disability status, postsecondary enrollment status or institution type, or first-generation in college student status may affect one’s comfort toward taking a COVID-19 vaccine (Taylor & Charran, 2023). Only limited research has explored COVID-19 vaccine attitudes held by college aged populations with limited discussions of race and racial equity (Mant et al, 2021; Taylor et al, 2022; Taylor & Childs, 2021). As a result, this study fills a critical gap in the literature by focusing on an important subpopulation (college students) and dissecting the data through an intersectional lens to provide more depth and insight into African American attitudes toward COVID-19 vaccinations.…”

“…Although COVID-19 has positioned institutions of higher education in a new predicament regarding vaccine mandates and Black college students, researchers have been investigating how individuals feel toward vaccines for as long as vaccines have been in existence (Bogart et al, 2022; Taylor & Childs, 2021). Related research, such as Warren et al’s (2020) and Momplaisir et al’s (2021) studies, found that Blacks were less likely to accept vaccines among other racial/ethnic groups.…”