Assessment of three key vaccine attitudes and exploration of their impact on vaccine uptake status in college students.
Personal attitudes towards vaccination as well as attitudes of friends and parents are likely key variables in predicting vaccination uptake (Flu, COVID-19, and HPV) in college students. Previous research has shown attitudes to be important predictors of health behaviors. However, there is no widely used psychometrically validated measure of attitudes in the literature that can be adjusted across vaccine types. Therefore, there is a need for a scale assessing college student personal attitudes and attitudes perceived in parents and friends toward vaccines. Furthermore, there is a need to test and build on mediation models predicting vaccination attitudes and behaviors across vaccine types that have been implied by previous work. Such models suggest that personal attitudes may mediate the relationship between friend/parent attitudes and vaccine uptake (Stout et al., 2020). Attitude scale items were developed and tested in a previous study. The present study validated the measures using CFA and IRT analyses in a sample of college students (N=324). Furthermore, mediation models were tested using Hayes Process Macro in SPSS. The present study found that each of the scales (e.g., self, parent, friend) demonstrated a single factor with high factor loadings and good item discrimination across vaccine types (e.g., Flu, COVID-19 booster, HPV). Overall, self attitudes were shown to be especially important in predicting vaccination behavior and mediated the relationships between other important variables and vaccine uptake. Hypotheses regarding parent and friend attitudes were not universally supported across all vaccine types. There is inconsistent support for the importance of parent and friend attitudes on vaccine uptake. Notably, the relationships between parent attitudes and vaccine uptake were mediated by self attitudes for flu and COVID-19 vaccine uptake but not HPV. However, the relationship between friend attitudes and vaccine uptake was mediated by self attitudes only for HPV. The paper ends with a discussion regarding the implications and limitations of this study as well as possible directions for future research.
Attitudes., Vaccination., Scale development., College students., Predictions., Behavior., Vaccine uptake., Parent attitudes., COVID-19., Flu., Human papillomavirus (HPV), Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), Item response theory (IRT), Hayes process macro in SPSS.
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