The Association Between Parent s Beliefs About Vaccines

Introduction The main objective of this particular study was to evaluate the association between parent’s beliefs about vaccines, their decision to delay or refuse vaccines for their children and vaccination coverage of children at aged 24 months. Method The method of selecting the sample was clearly defined and the sample size met the suggested guideline for minimum sample size. Data was collected using the National Immunization Survey (NIS) in two phases. Phase I, a telephone survey was conducted to identify households that have children aged 19-35 months, followed by Phase II, surveys were mailed to those children’s vaccination providers. Of the 17,313 children aged 19-35 months sampled by the NIS in 2009, the researchers†¦show more content†¦They then categorized the parents into one of four possible delay/refusal categories. This was dependent upon whether they reported (1) neither delaying nor refusing, (2) delaying but not refusing, (3) refusing and not delaying, or (4) delaying and refusing. In this article, the parents who delayed but did not refuse were referred to as parents who â€Å"only delayed,† and parents who refused but did not delay were referred to as parents who â€Å"only refused†. According to the researchers, parents who reported delaying or refusing vaccines and could remember the name of the vaccines that were delayed/refused were asked question about the reasons why they delayed or refused those vaccines. The parents’ beliefs about vaccines were assessed and the researchers used current data from the 2009 NIS to correlate the parents’ report of delay/refusal with the four psychosocial domains that index the Health Belief Model. To measure those domains, parent were read 11 statements to provide a verbatim response whether on a scale of zero to 10, where zero meant strongly disagree and 10 meant strongly agree. An evaluation of vaccination status was conducted. For each child sampled, the researchers evaluated vaccination status as of their 24 month birthday and referred to this as vaccination status at aged 24