THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN AGE GROUPS AND KNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTANDING OF COVID-19 VACCINE

Abstract

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is still an ongoing issue in the New Normal world. As COVID-19 is a human-to-human transmission disease, the viruses spread widely, and many people got infected. There are several preventative measures used to protect an individual from this situation, including vaccination. Thus, more vaccine candidates have been provided to generate a specific immune response against the disease-causing agent, and are prepared. Additionally, not all vaccine candidates are suitable for each individual. The main purposes of this study were to evaluate and determine the knowledge and understanding of the COVID-19 vaccines and the relationship between age groups and Thai citizens. To test whether the two aforementioned variables correlate, we conducted a cross-sectional survey through an online platform, Google form. Four hundred and Ten participants completed the survey. To determine the correlation, we used Statistical Product and Service Solution version 22.0 (SPSS) for data analysis. Pearsons correlation test revealed that there is no significant correlation between age groups and knowledge and understanding of COVID-19 vaccines. Although we did not find any correlation, we think that there may be other factors affecting peoples knowledge about the COVID-19 vaccines such as the sudden awareness due to the new pandemic outbreak and the straightforwardness of our online questionnaire. Since most people are now facing the third ripple of COVID-19 crisis, there might be a higher consumption rate of COVID-19 vaccine news and the majority of seniors (aged above 60) tend to reject answering the online questionnaire which significantly reduced our sample size.