Understanding COVID‐19 misinformation and vaccine hesitancy in context: Findings from a qualitative study involving citizens in Bradford, UK
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Abstract
Background
COVID‐19 vaccines can offer a route out of the pandemic, yet initial research suggests that many are unwilling to be vaccinated. A rise in the spread of misinformation is thought to have played a significant role in vaccine hesitancy. To maximize uptake, it is important to understand why misinformation has been able to take hold at this time and why it may pose a more significant problem within certain contexts.
Objective
To understand people's COVID‐19 beliefs, their interactions with (mis)information during COVID‐19 and attitudes towards a COVID‐19 vaccine.
Design and Participants
Bradford, UK, was chosen as the study site to provide evidence to local decision makers. In‐depth phone interviews were carried out with 20 people from different ethnic groups and areas of Bradford during Autumn 2020. Reflexive thematic analysis was conducted.
Results
Participants discussed a wide range of COVID‐19 misinformation they had encountered, resulting in confusion, distress and mistrust. Vaccine hesitancy could be attributed to three prominent factors: safety concerns, negative stories and personal knowledge. The more confused, distressed and mistrusting participants felt about their social worlds during the pandemic, the less positive they were about a vaccine.
Conclusions
COVID‐19 vaccine hesitancy needs to be understood in the context of the relationship between the spread of misinformation and associated emotional reactions. Vaccine programmes should provide a focused, localized and empathetic response to counter misinformation.
Patient or Public Contribution
A rapid community and stakeholder engagement process was undertaken to identify COVID‐19 priority topics important to Bradford citizens and decision makers.
Article activity feed
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SciScore for 10.1101/2020.12.22.20248259: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement Consent: All participants gave written, informed consent through one of the following methods: 1) taking a photo of their signed consent form and emailing it; 2) emailing or texting stating that they had read the information sheet and consent form and fully consented to taking part in the study or 3) sending a signed consent form via post or email. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable Eleven women and nine men participated, ranging from 20 to 85 years old, but most were aged between 25 and 54 years. Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We …
SciScore for 10.1101/2020.12.22.20248259: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement Consent: All participants gave written, informed consent through one of the following methods: 1) taking a photo of their signed consent form and emailing it; 2) emailing or texting stating that they had read the information sheet and consent form and fully consented to taking part in the study or 3) sending a signed consent form via post or email. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable Eleven women and nine men participated, ranging from 20 to 85 years old, but most were aged between 25 and 54 years. Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.
Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.
Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.
Results from rtransparent:- Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- No protocol registration statement was detected.
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SciScore for 10.1101/2020.12.22.20248259: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement All participants gave written, informed consent through one of the following methods: 1) taking a photo of their signed consent form and emailing it; 2) emailing or texting stating that they had read the information sheet and consent form and fully consented to taking part in the study or 3) sending a signed consent form via post or email. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable Eleven women and nine men participated, ranging from 20 to 85 years old, but most were aged between 25 and 54 years. Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did …
SciScore for 10.1101/2020.12.22.20248259: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement All participants gave written, informed consent through one of the following methods: 1) taking a photo of their signed consent form and emailing it; 2) emailing or texting stating that they had read the information sheet and consent form and fully consented to taking part in the study or 3) sending a signed consent form via post or email. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable Eleven women and nine men participated, ranging from 20 to 85 years old, but most were aged between 25 and 54 years. Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
LIMITATIONS Interviews took place before announcements about efficacious Covid-19 vaccines were made in November 2020. Participants’ discussions about a Covid-19 vaccine were therefore hypothetical. We do not know how these announcements, and the subsequent surge of information and misinformation, will have impacted on acceptability of a Covid-19 vaccine. The research was conducted in one place with specific population demographics, and may, therefore, not be widely generalisable. However, there are places all over the UK which have multi-ethnic communities, similar levels of deprivation and population density, and have experienced comparable rates of Covid-19 cases and deaths, which we predict will have similar problems with misinformation spread.
Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.
Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.
Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.
About SciScore
SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.
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