Abstract
Background and Objective: Although COVID-19 vaccine uptake in the United Kingdom (UK) has been encouraging, many individuals are either hesitant to get vaccinated for COVID-19 or refuse to do so. Research has uncovered associated demographic and psychological factors, but there is a lack of qualitative work involving individuals across the UK to explore reasons for this hesitancy. We aimed to qualitatively explore perceptions of the COVID-19 vaccine in individuals across the UK during the latter stages of the vaccine rollout. Methods: Free-text responses were collected within an online survey assessing factors associated with COVID-19 vaccine acceptance. In total, 861 individuals took part (156 males, 698 females, 1 non-binary, 6 preferred not to say); 217 provided free-text responses. The mean age was 42.04 (SD = 13.20). Six hundred thirty-one respondents (73.3%) had been vaccinated, and 230 (26.7%) had not. An inductive thematic analysis was conducted. Results: Five themes were yielded, describing fear as a vaccination barrier; perceptions of the COVID-19 vaccine being ineffective, unnecessary, unnatural, and experimental; perceived pressure to get vaccinated; practical barriers to getting vaccinated; and getting vaccinated to protect others and ‘get back to normal.’ Conclusion and Implications for Translation: Measures to increase COVID-19 vaccine uptake should target misinformation, fear, and practical factors as deterrents. Interventions such as motivational interviewing should be considered for guiding individuals towards considering COVID-19 vaccination. Copyright © 2022 Eberhardt and Ling. Published by Global Health and Education Projects, Inc. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License CC BY 4.0.
Highlights
Vaccine hesitancy is a “delay in acceptance or refusal of vaccination despite the availability of vaccination services.”[8]. Several demographic factors are associated with COVID-19 vaccine acceptance, including age, gender,[5,9,10] education,[9,10] and religiosity.[11]
The inductive thematic analysis yielded five themes: Fear as a vaccination barrier; COVID-19 vaccine as ineffective, unnecessary, unnatural, and experimental; Perceived pressure to get vaccinated; Practical barriers to getting vaccinated; and Getting vaccinated to protect others and ‘get back to normal’ (Table 2).These are described in detail below
This study offers insights into COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy from a substantial set of qualitative data collected from respondents across the United Kingdom (UK)
Summary
Current research into COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy has explored attitudes and beliefs related to COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy.[13,14,15] Conspiracy beliefs occur in a significant minority and are linked to lower adherence to coronavirus government guidelines and a lower willingness to take coronavirus tests or get vaccinated.[5,7] While it is important to uncover psychological factors underpinning COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy,[16] most studies are quantitative. While there have been some qualitative UK studies on people’s attitudes and beliefs about COVID-19 vaccination, these have been small-scale and focused on certain populations (healthcare staff)[17] or locations (a city in the North of England).[18] much of the research reviewed here was conducted either prior to or in the early stages of the COVID-19 vaccination program. Research has uncovered associated demographic and psychological factors, but there is a lack of qualitative work involving individuals across the UK to explore reasons for this hesitancy.We aimed to qualitatively explore perceptions of the COVID-19 vaccine in individuals across the UK during the latter stages of the vaccine rollout
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