What’s in Their Mind? High School Students’ Perspective of Vaccination

Yağız Varol, Öznur Akdıkan, Osman Buğra Tuncer, Fatma Sultan Yağcı, Okan Ayan, Pemra C. Unalan, Meltem Aydın

Keywords: adolescent health, vaccine hesitancy, vaccination, knowledge, decision-making

Background:
Vaccine hesitation has become one of the highly debated topics today. The number of the vaccines that are applicable for adolescence is very few and adolescents’ visit to primary care is limited to acute problems. So it is difficult to observe the health status of the adolescents periodically.

Research questions:
What is high school students’ knowledge, attitude and behaviour about vaccination?

Method:
This descriptive type study and has been conducted during february and march, 2021. The researchers use the “lockdown” as an opportunity and 571 Turkish high school students between the ages of 13-19 who share an online homework site gave consent to join the study. Participants The "Knowledge, Attitudes and Behaviors of High School Students on Vaccination'' questionnaire, consisting of 33 close ended questions, was applied online. The data was analyzed with the SPSS 22.0 program.

Results:
All of the participants 60.9% stated that vaccination was effective in prevention, 26.3% were uncertain, 48.3% thought vaccines were safe, while 33.6% were uncertain and 17.9% were stated them unsafe. The number of the students who talk about vaccination with their parents were higher if one of the family mambers or close relatives is a health prefessional(p <0.05). The frequency of being vaccinated agains influenza was higher among the students who were informed by the health prefessionals(p <0.05). The participants who stated that he would accept vaccination for Hepatitis C if there was a vaccine developped were significantly higher among the participants who were informed by health workers about vaccination or adviced by their parents (p <0.05).

Conclusions:
The education level of the parents and having talked to their parents about vaccination reduce vaccination hesitancy. Being informed about vaccination makes it easier for adolescents to accept it. It would be beneficial for healthcare professionals to encourage both adolescents and their families to talk about this issue.

Points for discussion: