Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Formative Research
Date Submitted: Sep 18, 2023
Open Peer Review Period: Sep 18, 2023 - Sep 28, 2023
Date Accepted: May 10, 2024
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Culturally Safe Electronic Data Collection: Using an Indigenous Consensus Method to Create a Vaccine Confidence Survey Instrument for Indigenous Youth
ABSTRACT
Background:
Participating in surveys can shape the perception of participants related to the study topic. Administering a vaccine hesitancy questionnaire can have negative impacts on participants’ vaccine confidence. This is particularly true for online and cross-cultural data collection because culturally safe health education to correct misinformation is typically not provided after the administration of an electronic survey.
Objective:
To create a culturally safe, online, COVID-19 vaccine confidence survey for Indigenous youth designed to collect authentic, culturally relevant data of their vaccine experiences, with low risk of contributing to further vaccine confusion among participants.
Methods:
Using the Aboriginal Telehealth Knowledge Circle Consensus Method, a team of academics, health care providers, policy makers, and community partners reviewed COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy surveys used in public health research, analyzed potential risks, and created a framework for electronic Indigenous vaccine confidence surveys as well as survey items.
Results:
The framework for safer online survey items is based on two principles, a first do-no-harm approach and applying a strengths-based lens. Relevant survey domains identified in the process include socio demographic information, participants’ connection to their community, preferred sources for health information, vaccination uptake among family members and peers, as well as personal attitudes towards vaccines. A total of 44 survey items were developed, including five open ended items to improve authenticity of the data and in the analysis of the experiences of Indigenous youth.
Conclusions:
Using an Indigenous consensus method, we have developed an online COVID-19 vaccine confidence survey with culturally relevant domains and reduced risk for amplifying misinformation and negative impacts on vaccine confidence among Indigenous participants. Our approach can be adapted to other online survey development in collaboration with Indigenous communities.
Citation
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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.