The Turkish version of the Oxford Covid-19 Vaccine Hesitancy Scale

Abstract

Aim: Covid-19 vaccine hesitancy can be an obstacle to the global effort to control the current pandemic. The study aimed to test the validity and reliability of the Turkish version of the Oxford Covid-19 Vaccine Hesitancy Scale. Design: A methodological and descriptive study. Methods: The research was conducted as a methodological and descriptive study. The sample size consisted of 476 academics who voluntarily agreed to participate in the research and completed the online questionnaire between February and March 2021. Results: As a result of the confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), the fit index values obtained by making two modifications of the one-dimensional Oxford Covid-19 Vaccine Hesitancy Scale were found to be χ 2 /df = 1.86; AGFI = 0.96; RMSEA = 0.04; GFI = 0.98; CFI = 0.99 and IFI = 0.99. The Cronbachʼs alpha internal consistency coefficient of the scale was calculated as 0.95. Test-retest reliability coefficient of the scale was r = 0.93 (p < 0.001). Conclusion: It can be concluded that the Oxford Covid-19 Vaccine Hesitancy Scale, adapted to Turkish, is a valid and reliable measurement tool for determining hesitancy of Turkish society towards covid-19 vaccines.

The Deficit and Contextual Models of Vaccine Hesitancy: A Test of the Mediation Paths

“…Namely, higher religiosity and right-wing political orientation were connected with higher institutional trust, which itself was connected with lower vaccine hesitancy. Therefore, this indirect path reduced vaccine hesitancy (2022) and Baumgaertner et al (2018), bearing in mind that they also confirmed the mediating role of the institutional trust within the connection between political identification and vaccine hesitancy, but in the opposite direction than ours. Such findings indicate the importance of contextualizing religiosity and political orientation as determinants of vaccine hesitancy, that is, the importance of ad-hoc factors and specific socio-historical and socio-political circumstances.…”

“…leads to the conclusion that people with higher levels of literacy will have higher levels of trust in science, which ultimately leads to positive attitudes toward vaccines. While there are no studies analyzing the mediating role of trust in science in the context of general vaccines, we can note that Capasso et al (2022) have established the mediating role of trust in science in COVID-19 attitudes in a specific population of unvaccinated men and women. The fact that science literacy was a full mediator in the case of vaccines in general, and only a partial mediator in the case of COVID-19 vaccines, can be explained by the special context in which COVID-19 attitudes have been formed.…”

“…The scale has been found to be reliable and valid in measuring vaccine hesitancy as it is highly associated with the Vaccine Hesitancy Scale (VHS) proposed by Shapiro et al (2018). Additionally, the scale has been validated in a few countries and among different populations (e.g., Fazel et al, 2021; Huang et al, 2022a; Joshi et al, 2021; Karabulut et al, 2022; Van Duong et al, 2021). Cronbach alpha in the current study amounted to .86.…”

“…When it comes to political identification, Wollebaek et al (2022) found that right-wing ideological beliefs (mainly the opposition toward state power) were related to higher COVID-19 vaccine refusal. Institutional trust proved to be linked to lower refusal, whereas that was not the case for partisanship.…”