What can be learned from pre-service teachers' intentions to vaccinate against COVID-19 and relevant factors for future crises? A cross-sectional survey research

Abstract

This study aimed to investigate how pre-service teachers' intentions to vaccinate against COVID-19 were related to their perceptions of the causes of COVID-19, which are conspiracy thoughts, perceptions of environmental and faith factors, trust in scientists, and risk perceptions toward COVID-19 vaccines. In this study, a cross-sectional survey research method was used and an online questionnaire was administered to 434 Turkish pre-service teachers from 19 different universities in Türkiye. A multinomial logistic regression analysis was conducted to predict pre-service teachers' vaccination intentions and two multinomial logit models were evaluated. The results indicated that most preservice teachers had a positive intention to vaccinate against COVID-19. Pre-service teachers with lower risk perceptions about COVID-19 vaccination and scores on conspiracy thoughts, and higher scores on perceptions of environmental factors about COVID-19 vaccination were more likely to have a positive intention of getting COVID-19 vaccination. However, trust in scientists and faith did not have significant relationships with the intention of getting COVID-19 vaccination. Based on our findings we suggest paying attention to increasing environmental perceptions of pre-service teachers, decreasing their beliefs in conspiracy theories and risk perceptions, and increasing trust in scientists, which are believed to contribute to the development of teacher education programs that would more likely equip teacher candidates with features necessary for dealing with global challenges in the world..