The Effect of Parents' Health Literacy Level on the Attitudes and Behaviors of Childhood Vaccinations

Abstract

Objective: Health literacy is important for parents to correctly perceive and implement decisions about their children's health. Health literacy of parents can affect their understanding of the requirements of preventive treatments and their positive attitudes and behaviors towards childhood vaccines. The global growth of vaccine hesitations in recent years has led to increasing concern at WHO. Therefore, the level of health literacy may be important in experiencing vaccine hesitancy. For this reason, the study was carried out to determine the relationship between the health literacy level of parents with 0-59 months old children and their attitudes and behaviors towards childhood vaccinations. 
 Methods: A cross-sectional and descriptive design was used in the study. The sample group consisted of 1038 parents. As data collection tools in the research; Introductory information form containing introductory information, Parents' Attitudes to Childhood Vaccines Scale and Health Literacy Scale were used. Parents were contacted via an online survey link. 
 Results: The mean age of the parents was 35.36 ± 4.93 years, and 81.7% had an undergraduate/graduate degree. A statistically significant difference was found between the parents' scores from the PACV and the status of obtaining information and negative information about vaccines (Z = 2.431, p = 0.015; Z = 8.707, p = 0.000, respectively). Vaccine hesitancy was higher in those who did not obtain information about vaccines than those who did, and in those who obtained negative opinions about vaccines from health personnel than those who did not. As scores from the T-SOY increased, the scores from the PACV decreased.
 Conclusion: As parents' health literacy levels increased, their vaccine hesitancy decreased. It is thought that initiatives targeting health literacy can improve vaccination coverage and that knowing these relationships well will benefit determining the strategies for combating vaccine opposition and their effectiveness. In our study, vaccine hesitancy was higher in parents who obtained negative opinions from healthcare professionals. This striking result of our study is important in showing that it is not possible to fight against vaccine opposition without building the trust in vaccines among healthcare professionals.

The effects of parents' vaccine hesitancy and COVID-19 vaccine literacy on attitudes toward vaccinating their children during the pandemic

“…We observed that parents who were exposed to negative news and could not find the correct information or could not adequately distinguish between reliable and unreliable knowledge had more negative attitudes toward the COVID-19 vaccination. Our study results were in agreement with the results that parents who accessed the correct information and benefited from scientific pages on the Internet had more positive attitudes toward the COVID-19 vaccination in the literature ( Dağlı & Topkara, 2023 ; Engelbrecht et al, 2022 ; Kocamaz & Kocamaz, 2022 ; Siewchaisakul et al, 2022 ; Ünlü & Yıldıray, 2021 ; Yigit et al, 2021 ; Yıldız et al, 2021 ).…”

“…With the opening of schools, the fact children were actively infected with COVID-19 and survived with mild symptoms may have reduced the perception of the need for vaccination. In addition, the low number of deaths from COVID-19 in children and the fact that COVID-19 often shows mild symptoms created the perception that it is not necessary to vaccinate children against COVID-19 ( Dağlı & Topkara, 2023 ; Kocamaz & Kocamaz, 2022 ; Ünlü & Yıldıray, 2021 ; Yigit et al, 2021 ; Yıldız et al, 2021 ). These factors may have led to a negative attitude toward the COVID-19 vaccine.…”

“…It is also necessary to raise vaccine literacy among parents and teach them where, from which sources, and how to obtain reliable knowledge from healthcare professionals or health educators. Parents' trust in the vaccination may grow as they receive accurate information from an appropriate source ( Dağlı & Topkara, 2023 ; Dubé et al, 2018 ). Consequently, it is crucial to establish vaccine literacy and ascertain how it influences vaccination opposition ( Cousin et al, 2023 ; Humble et al, 2021 ; Ruggiero et al, 2021 ).…”