Development and validation of a COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy scale for adults in the United States

Abstract

COVID-19 vaccines have been rapidly developed. However, widespread uptake remains a hurdle to a successful pandemic response. A simple, user-friendly survey to measure vaccine hesitancy may facilitate development of interventions aimed at maximizing vaccination. We developed a novel 10-item instrument designed to measure COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in adults in the United States. We recruited 232 participants through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, an online crowdsourcing platform. The internal consistency (Cronbach’s α = 0.89) and temporal stability (r = 0.87; p < 0.001) of our survey was strong. Lower hesitancy (high scores) was associated with higher trust in physicians (r = 0.58; p < 0.001), and higher hesitancy (low scores) was reported with higher belief in conspiracies (r = -0.68; p < 0.001). The correlation between low hesitancy and reported intent to receive (or history of receiving) at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine was moderate-strong (r = 0.68; p < 0.001).