The Effect of Vaccine Literacy on Parental Trust and Intention to Vaccinate after a Major Vaccine Scandal

Abstract

Health literacy, and more specifically vaccine literacy, might be an important factor in reducing the negative effects of exposure to misleading reports on vaccination. This study explores the association between vaccine literacy and vaccination-related outcomes after misleading reports on a scandal concerning locally produced childhood vaccines had emerged in 2016 in China. Data for this study came from a cross-sectional survey, which was conducted in April 2016 in Hangzhou, China. Data were collected in kindergartens and community health centers among parents of children up to 6 years of age. Data were analyzed for 1864 participants. Binary logistic regression models showed that, after controlling for socio-demographics and children's age, parents who had better vaccine literacy (<0.05) were more likely to trust and choose domestically produced vaccines, which account for about 95% of the total vaccinations in China. This study provides evidence on a still largely understudied relationship between vaccine literacy and vaccination-related outcomes. Findings might suggest that higher literacy levels could reduce some of the negative effects of being exposed to misleading information on vaccination, eventually leading to less vaccination hesitancy.

Beyond fragmentary: A proposed measure for travel vaccination concerns

“…For instance, it may sometimes require extra time for travel health practitioners to educate patients about the safety, efficacy, and usefulness of vaccines before administration, which has implications on time convenience. Though tourism is a discretionary time and income activity, time and cost considerations could, mainly, be essential factors to tourists at the trip planning stage as they strive to plan different and complicated things ( Wang, Zhou, Leesa, & Mantwill, 2018 ). Besides vaccinations, the available time and income resources are competed for by other activities such as planning for flights and accommodation.…”

“I was Right about Vaccination”: Confirmation Bias and Health Literacy in Online Health Information Seeking

“…By using this measure, we are able to draw conclusions about the effects of HL on our dependent variables rather than self-reported HL specific to the context of early-childhood vaccination. For reasons of comparability with other studies that may apply context-specific HL measures (e.g., Aharon et al, 2017;Wang et al, 2018), we also tested our hypotheses using the self-reported functional, communicative, and critical HL scales as predictors. The results obtained with the functional HL scale are comparable with the results presented below (using the NVS).…”

“…It is still unclear whether this finding is the result of confirmation bias and only applies to parents who hold negative beliefs about early-childhood vaccination. Another study in the same context showed that people with higher HL are in fact more willing to vaccinate their children (Wang, Zhou, Lin, & Mantwill, 2018).…”

Risk communication on behavioral responses during COVID-19 among general population in China: A rapid national study

“…The questionnaire was developed based on previous studies on risk communication, 17 , 27 , 28 and focus groups specific to understanding risk perceptions and communication related to the COVID-19 pandemic in China. Two online focus groups, each with six people in the fields of public health and medicine, were conducted to rank the most common misinformation during the epidemic.…”