Loading…

The effect of COVID‐19 vaccine literacy on attitudes towards COVID‐19 vaccine among university students

Objective University students are a large group of the population who should be vaccinated to prevent the spread of the pandemic. This research aimed to determine the effect of COVID‐19 vaccine literacy on the attitudes towards the COVID‐19 vaccine among university students. Methods This descriptive...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Health information and libraries journal 2023-09, Vol.40 (3), p.307-318
Main Authors: Durmuş Iskender, Mahinur, Eren, Handan, Durmuş, Ayşenur
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Objective University students are a large group of the population who should be vaccinated to prevent the spread of the pandemic. This research aimed to determine the effect of COVID‐19 vaccine literacy on the attitudes towards the COVID‐19 vaccine among university students. Methods This descriptive and cross‐sectional study was conducted with 2384 university students via online survey in September and October 2021. ‘Demographic Information Form’, ‘COVID‐19 Vaccine Literacy Scale’, and ‘Attitudes towards the COVID‐19 Vaccine Scale’ were used to collect the data. Data were evaluated via descriptive statistics, independent group t‐test, ANOVA, Tukey HSD, and Pearson Correlation analysis. Results The mean score on the COVID‐19 Vaccine Literacy Scale was 27.26 ± 6.49 (moderate). Demographic differences that significantly affected students' vaccine literacy scales included parents' education levels (lower levels of parental education associated with higher communicative/critical vaccine literacy). Health sciences students had more positive attitudes to the COVID vaccine than students of other disciplines. The higher the level of mother's education, the more positive the student's attitude towards the vaccine, and similarly the higher the student's socio‐economic background the higher the positive attitude towards the vaccine. Examination of the relationship between the vaccine literacy scale and the attitudes towards the vaccine showed low levels of correlation. Discussion Students who had parents of lower education levels may have more responsibilities for explaining vaccination to their parents, thus improving their communicative/critical vaccine literacy. Conclusion A vaccine literacy scale with separate functional literacy score and critical/communicative score helps to explain some of socio‐demographic differences in students' scores, and similarly for attitude towards the COVID‐19 vaccine (positive and negative attitude sub‐scales).
ISSN:1471-1834
1471-1842
DOI:10.1111/hir.12489