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Observational Study
. 2024 May 18;24(1):1348.
doi: 10.1186/s12889-024-18806-1.

Parental hesitancy toward children vaccination: a multi-country psychometric and predictive study

Hamid Sharif-Nia  1   2 , Long She  3 , Kelly-Ann Allen  4   5 , João Marôco  6 , Harpaljit Kaur  7 , Gökmen Arslan  8 , Ozkan Gorgulu  9 , Jason W Osborne  10 , Pardis Rahmatpour  11 , Fatemeh Khoshnavay Fomani  12
Affiliations
Observational Study

Parental hesitancy toward children vaccination: a multi-country psychometric and predictive study

Hamid Sharif-Nia et al. BMC Public Health. .

Abstract

Aim: Understanding vaccine hesitancy, as a critical concern for public health, cannot occur without the use of validated measures applicable and relevant to the samples they are assessing. The current study aimed to validate the Vaccine Hesitancy Scale (VHS) and to investigate the predictors of children's vaccine hesitancy among parents from Australia, China, Iran, and Turkey. To ensure the high quality of the present observational study the STROBE checklist was utilized.

Design: A cross-sectional study.

Method: In total, 6,073 parent participants completed the web-based survey between 8 August 2021 and 1 October 2021. The content and construct validity of the Vaccine Hesitancy Scale was assessed. Cronbach's alpha and McDonald's omega were used to assess the scale's internal consistency, composite reliability (C.R.) and maximal reliability (MaxR) were used to assess the construct reliability. Multiple linear regression was used to predict parental vaccine hesitancy from gender, social media activity, and perceived financial well-being.

Results: The results found that the VHS had a two-factor structure (i.e., lack of confidence and risk) and a total of 9 items. The measure showed metric invariance across four very different countries/cultures, showed evidence of good reliability, and showed evidence of validity. As expected, analyses indicated that parental vaccine hesitancy was higher in people who identify as female, more affluent, and more active on social media.

Conclusions: The present research marks one of the first studies to evaluate vaccine hesitancy in multiple countries that demonstrated VHS validity and reliability. Findings from this study have implications for future research examining vaccine hesitancy and vaccine-preventable diseases and community health nurses.

Keywords: Australia; China; Iran; Nursing; Psychometric; Turkey; Vaccine hesitancy.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

The authors report no conflicts of interest in this work.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
The results of the Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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