Date of Conferral

5-2-2025

Date of Award

May 2025

Degree

Ph.D.

School

Public Health

Advisor

Manoj Sharma

Abstract

While there is a significant body of literature regarding vaccine hesitancy, there is a gap in the literature on its impact to parents’ decisions to vaccinate their children against a pandemic pathogen. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between parental vaccine hesitancy, measured using the health belief model (HBM) theoretical framework constructs of the Vaccine Hesitancy Scale (VHS; the degree to which an individual trusts in vaccine efficacy, safety, the reliability and trustworthiness of vaccine programs, community impact, perceived risks, and the importance of childhood vaccinations), and parents’ decision to vaccinate their children against COVID-19 with and without controlling for sociodemographic variables. Adult parents (N=1591) with children under the age of 18, completed the VHS’s Likert-scale questions and sociodemographic questions. Logistic regression was used to test the association between HBM VHS and COVID-19 vaccine acceptance among parents for their children. The results indicated a significant relationship exists between vaccine hesitance and parents not vaccinating their children against COVID-19 (OR = 2.861, 95% CI (2.330-3.513), p < 0.001), suggesting that parents who are already vaccine hesitant will remain vaccine hesitant in a pandemic. There was no significant relationship between sociodemographic variables and parents vaccinating their children against COVID-19 (OR = 2.808, 95% CI (2.260-3.488), p > 0.05). Implications for positive social change include expanded insight into the impact of parental vaccine hesitancy and vaccination decisions for children during pandemics.

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