Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Formative Research
Date Submitted: Aug 22, 2022
Open Peer Review Period: Aug 9, 2022 - Aug 23, 2022
Date Accepted: Jan 13, 2023
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the decision and doubts about vaccination in Catalonia: online cross-sectional questionnaire
ABSTRACT
Background:
Hesitancy to get vaccinated during the COVID-19 pandemic may decrease vaccination coverage and facilitate the appearance of local or global outbreaks.
Objective:
The objective of this study was to analyse the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in Catalonia on three aspects: the decision to get vaccinated against COVID-19; the changes in opinion about vaccination in general; and the decision to get vaccinated against other diseases.
Methods:
We performed an observational study in the population aged 18 years or over, of Catalonia, obtaining the information through a self-completed questionnaire in electronic format. Differences between groups were determined using the Chi-square test, the Mann-Whitney U test, or the Student's t-test.
Results:
We analysed the answers of 1188 respondents, of which 870 were women, 47.0% had sons or daughters under the age of 14, and 71.7% had university studies. A percentage of 16.3% stated that they had refused a vaccine on some occasion; 76.3% totally agreed with vaccines; 1.9% were indifferent; and 3.5% and 1.2% slightly or totally disagreed, respectively. As a result of the pandemic, 90.8% stated that they would get vaccinated against COVID-19 when they would be asked, while 9.2% stated the opposite. A greater intention to get vaccinated was observed among respondents who had not previously rejected other vaccines; were totally in favour of vaccines; had not increased their doubts about vaccination and had not changed their decision about vaccines as a result of the pandemic. Finally, 30.3% reported an increase in their doubts regarding vaccination and 13.0% stated that they had changed their decision about routinely recommended vaccines as a result of the pandemic.
Conclusions:
The population studied was predominantly in favour of vaccination; however, the percentage of people specifically rejecting the vaccination against COVID-19 was high. As a result of the pandemic, we detected an increase in doubts about vaccines, although this did not change the final decision about vaccination.
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.