Role of Information Technology in COVID-19 Vaccination Drive: An Analysis of the COVID-19 Global Beliefs, Behaviors, and Norms Survey.

Abstract

With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, information technology has played a critical role in healthcare. A broad spectrum of information technology tools and applications played an essential role to create awareness of the COVID-19 vaccination drive and its health benefits. Research conducted by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in collaboration with information technology platforms like Facebook with inputs from World Health Organization (WHO), John Hopkins University (JHU), and Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network (GOARN) shows that 65.06% of people all over the globe are willing to get vaccinated. Vaccine acceptance depends upon social norms and human behavior. These organizations conducted the global survey in over 60 countries with a sample size of 437,236 responses. The international survey was organized using a pre-registered randomized experiment demonstrating the role of technology in reaching out to people based in diverse communities and evaluating their beliefs, behavior, and social norms. The study shows that vaccine acceptance can vary due to descriptive norms. All the respondents in the study were adults with access to the internet. Moreover, a large proportion of the population thinks that the COVID-19 pandemic is a viable threat to the community and preventive measures need to be taken including vaccination drives to eradicate the menace. The survey consisted of five blocks involving questions related to healthcare, demographics, vaccines, knowledge, and information exposure. Sampling and weighting were done using a pool of 3,000 respondents over two weeks, and weights were provided per respondent to represent the target population as a whole. It reduces the representation error and minimizes non-response biases.