Knowledge and attitudes towards child vaccination among public in Cyberjaya, Selangor and their level of vaccine hesitancy

Abstract

Vaccination is regarded as one of the greatest public health achievements and one of the most cost-effective interventions to prevent childhood major illnesses and mortality. However, despite being recognized as one of the most successful public health measures, vaccination is perceived as unsafe and unnecessary by a growing number of individuals that lead to vaccine hesitancy. This study aimed to determine public level of knowledge, attitudes and hesitancy towards child vaccination in Cyberjaya, Selangor. This study also aimed to measure the association between level of knowledge and attitudes with different respondents’ demographic data. Another aim of this study is to measure correlation between knowledge and attitudes with hesitancy towards child vaccination. A guided self-administered questionnaire was used to assess the knowledge, attitudes and hesitancy of the respondents. This cross-sectional study involved 300 respondents identified from the public. Majority of the respondents were females (65.0%), age between 18-29 years (74.7%), Malay (82.3%), Muslim (84.0%), with tertiary education level (78.7%), students (50.0%) and unmarried (70.7%). This study found that the respondents had an overall poor knowledge towards child vaccination (mean knowledge score = 51.3 ± 20.1).