News & Views: Education Makes It Worse?
Published on in Vaccine Update for Healthcare Providers
Published on in Vaccine Update for Healthcare Providers
Two recent papers by researchers at Dartmouth University may have disheartened you if you heard about them:
In both of these papers, which were covered by the media, the authors concluded that vaccine messages meant to educate might actually misinform and even decrease intent to vaccinate. Let’s take a closer look at these studies, so that we can better understand what they mean for those of us who educate about vaccines. Should we just stop trying? By no means!
Study format: The study was conducted in two waves of online panels in which respondents during the first wave were re-contacted to complete the second wave.
Participants: 1,759 parents of children ages 17 or younger
Phase one: Measurement of health and vaccine attitudes allowing respondents to be categorized by how favorably they viewed vaccines.
Phase two: Respondents were randomly assigned to one of five experimental groups:
Outcomes: Three main outcomes were measured; however, each was only determined by respondents’ answers to a single question (per outcome):
Study findings:
Study format: Data for this study were generated as part of an online survey primarily focused on politics and government. Two waves of surveys were conducted.
Participants: U.S. adults drawn from the YouGov/PolimetrixPollingPointPanel and the E-Rewards and Western Wats panels. Phase one had 1,000 respondents, and phase two represented phase one recipients who accepted an invitation to participate in phase two. Phase two had 822 respondents.
Phase one: Prior to introduction of the interventions, all respondents were asked about their concerns related to serious vaccine side effects and this information was used to segregate respondents into high- or low-concern groups for purposes of comparison. The high-risk group represented 24 percent of total respondents.
After the concern group information was obtained, respondents were randomly assigned to one of the following experimental groups:
Phase two: Designed to measure longevity of impact of interventions; however, the group suffered non-random attrition that prevented drawing valid conclusions related to this measure.
Outcomes: Three main outcomes were measured in both waves of the experiment; however, each was only determined by respondents’ answers to a single question (per outcome):
Study findings:
While it is important to consider these findings, we need to realize the framework in which they were found and evaluate them in the context of the bigger picture.
From our experience, we can tell pretty early in a conversation which people will not be convinced, and it is likely that if you have these conversations in your office daily, you can too.
Contributed by: Charlotte A. Moser, MS, Paul A. Offit, MD
Categories: News and Views About Vaccines
Materials in this section are updated as new information and vaccines become available. The Vaccine Education Center staff regularly reviews materials for accuracy.
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