Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Formative Research
Date Submitted: Jul 23, 2022
Open Peer Review Period: Jul 23, 2022 - Aug 15, 2022
Date Accepted: Aug 27, 2023
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Potential determinants contributing to COVID-19 vaccine acceptance and hesitancy: a rapid qualitative study
ABSTRACT
Background:
Although vaccination has been shown to be one of the most important interventions in the field of public health throughout the 21st century, worldwide COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy is known as one of the top ten global public health challenges. The public willingness to receive COVID-19 vaccination and the keywords selected to perform online search on COVID-19 vaccines may be different compared to other previous vaccines.
Objective:
The objective of this study is to propose an approach of mixed methods to investigate the followings: 1) major determinants of vaccine hesitancy; 2) the changes in determinants of vaccine hesitancy at different time periods; and 3) the potential factors affecting vaccine acceptance among Taiwanese citizens.
Methods:
This study began with online interviews in July 2021, the responses obtained from the online interviews were compiled by thematic analysis to find the possible determinants contributing to vaccine hesitancy. Furthermore, key words being searched related to vaccination between January to July in 2021 were being collected by google trends. Data was analyzed by autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) analysis.
Results:
The four prevailing factors responsible for COVID-19 vaccines acceptance and hesitancy among Taiwanese citizens included: doubts with the government and manufacturers, side effects, deaths associated with vaccination, and efficacy of vaccination. During rising period of the pandemic, side effects, death, and vaccine efficacy were the main factors contributing to vaccine hesitancy. The highest google searching queries related to the COVID-19 vaccines began as “side effects” prior to vaccination, deaths associated with vaccines during single vaccine available period, and “side effects” and “vaccine efficacy” during multiple vaccines available period.
Conclusions:
The four predominant determinants contributing to vaccine hesitancy among Taiwanese citizens are doubts with the government and manufacturers, side effects, deaths associated with vaccination, and efficacy of vaccination. Google Trends may be used as a complementary infoveillance tool by government agencies for future vaccine policy implementation and communication. Clinical Trial: Not applicable
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.