Scientific literacy linked to attitudes toward COVID-19 vaccinations: A pre-registered study

Abstract

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, which began in early 2020, is a global public health crisis. To prevent the spread of COVID-19, it is necessary to promote vaccine administration and preventive behaviors (e.g., mask, handwashing, social distancing). However, some people have negative attitudes toward vaccine administration and preventive behaviors. The present study investigated how scientific literacy and perceived understanding of COVID-19 influence attitudes toward COVID-19 vaccinations and preventive behaviors. The findings demonstrated that both scientific literacy and perceived understanding of COVID-19 vaccines were positively associated with attitudes toward COVID-19 vaccines. Additionally, perceived understanding of COVID-19 preventive behaviors (but not scientific literacy) was positively associated with attitudes toward/practice of COVID-19 preventive behaviors. Collectively, our findings revealed the role of cognitive factors in preventing the global public health crisis and demonstrated the effects of objective and subjective knowledge on attitudes toward COVID-19 vaccinations and preventive behaviors.

The influence of social norms varies with “others” groups: Evidence from COVID-19 vaccination intentions

“…Using a quasi-experimental design with surveys conducted at different points in the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccine rollout, we nd that beliefs about others' intentions to get vaccinated predict people's own intentions even when holding constant demographic variables that re ect risk of poor COVID-19 outcomes (gender [30]; race [30,31]; age [24]; education [32]; family income [31,33]) as well as variables that have been shown to predict COVID-19 health behaviors even though they are not associated with differential risk (partisan identity [25,34]; political ideology [35]; trust in science [36]; trust in government [37]; religiosity [38]; COVID-19 knowledge [39]; and subjective assessments of that knowledge [40]). Moreover, who those others are-one's friends and family, neighbors, city or state co-residents-dictates the strength of the relationship, which declines as the groups get larger and more diffuse.…”

“…For other dimensions associated with COVID-19 health behaviors, pairs were identical on party ID (Democrat, Republican, other [25,34]) and similar on political ideology (liberal-conservative [35]), trust in science (36), trust in government (37), religiosity (38), COVID-19 knowledge (39), and subjective assessments of that knowledge (40).…”

“…pre-analysis plan designated only demographics as variables used to pair respondents in the matched design. Rather than overlook other measured dimensions that could plausibly explain away perceived social norms/vaccination intentions relationships, we chose to add additional measures from the surveys-speci cally, trust in science (Koetke et al, 2021; Plohl & Musil, 2020; Stosic et al, 2021), trust in government (Han et al, 2021; Pagliaro et al, 2021), religiosity (Milligan et al, 2021; Olagoke et al, 2020), COVID-19 knowledge (Ning et al, 2020),and subjective assessments of that knowledge(Motoki et al, 2021). FigureS1shows that the patterns are the same without these additional variables, with one exception: Democrats displayed a strong relationship between perceived social norms of co-partisans and their own vaccination intentions that vanished once respondents were further matched on trust in science, trust in government, religiosity , COVID-19 knowledge, and subjective assessments of COVID-19 knowledge.…”