Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Dec 31, 2020
Date Accepted: Feb 19, 2021
Date Submitted to PubMed: Apr 14, 2021
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in Canada: a content analysis of Tweets using the Theoretical Domains Framework
ABSTRACT
Background:
With the approval of two COVID-19 vaccines in Canada, many people feel a sense of relief with hope on the horizon. However, only about 75% of Canadians plan to receive one of the vaccines.
Objective:
The purpose of this research is to determine the reasons Canadians feel hesitant towards taking a COVID-19 vaccine.
Methods:
We analyzed 3,915 Tweets from public Twitter profiles in Canada using the search words “vaccine” and “COVID.” Those Tweets that met the inclusion criteria (i.e., were about COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy) were coded using content analysis. Codes were then organized into themes then interpreted using the Theoretical Domains Framework (TDF).
Results:
Overall, 605 Tweets identified as exhibiting COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy. Vaccine hesitancy stems from the following six themes: concerns over safety; suspicion about political and/or economic forces driving the COVID-19 or the vaccine; lack of knowledge about the vaccine; anti-vaccine or confusing messaging from authority figures; lack of legal liability from the vaccine companies; and the historical legacy of mistrust toward the medical industry by minority communities. These themes were categorized into five TDF constructs: knowledge, beliefs about consequences, environment context and resources, and social influence.
Conclusions:
With the World Health Organization stating that one of the worst threats to global health is vaccine hesitancy, it is important to have a fulsome understanding of the reasons behind this reluctance. Healthcare leaders and clinicians may use this knowledge to build public health interventions that are responsive to the concerns of citizens who are hesitant to get vaccinated. Using a behavioural theory, this research adds to the emerging knowledge about vaccine hesitancy in relation to COVID-19 using public discourse from Tweets in real-time. Clinical Trial: n/a
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.