Parents’ Knowledge and Attitude toward Childhood Vaccination in Qassim, Saudi Arabia

Abstract

Introduction: Childhood vaccination programs participate greatly in reducing the spread of vaccine preventable diseases. Beside the noticeable success of vaccination, there are still parents’ questions and hesitancy regarding childhood vaccination.
 Aims: This study evaluated the knowledge and attitude of parents in Qassim region towards childhood vaccination with the aim to measure the degree of the local community acceptance of childhood vaccination with aspiration to add an effective literature information in this field.
 Study Design: A cross sectional survey study using a Google form designed questionnaire.
 Place and Duration of Study: This study was conducted in Qassim in Saudi Arabia from October 2020 to December 2020.
 Methodology: We included 403 parents. The data was collected using a questionnaire divided in to three parts; socio-demographic, knowledge and attitude, and side effects. The knowledge was evaluated by seven items with answers set in to ‘Yes’, ‘No’ and ‘Don’t know’. The attitude by seven items with fixed-answers of ‘Agree’, ‘Neutral’ and ‘Disagree’. In the third part side effects like fever, pain, diarrhea, skin rash and seizures were directly asked. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used in the analysis of data. 
 Results: Among 403 participants, the majority were young adult female with a bachelor degree. The parents have good levels of knowledge and attitude towards child hood vaccination and the levels are significantly differed among various demographic variables. The parents’ attitude is linearly influenced by their level of knowledge (P-value is <0.001).
 Conclusion: Beside the good parents’ knowledge that positively influenced by their attitude toward childhood vaccination with a considerable local public awareness in this field, parents recommended more awareness campaigns on vaccination’s benefits and risks.