Social Patterning and Stability of Intention to Accept a COVID-19 Vaccine in Scotland: Will Those Most at Risk Accept a Vaccine?

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Abstract

Vaccination is central to controlling COVID-19. Its success relies on having safe and effective vaccines and also on high levels of uptake by the public over time. Addressing questions of population-level acceptability, stability of acceptance, and sub-population variation in acceptability are imperative. Using a prospective design, a repeated measures two-wave online survey was conducted to assess key sociodemographic variables and intention to accept a COVID-19 vaccine. The first survey (Time 1) was completed by 3436 people during the period of national lockdown in Scotland and the second survey (n = 2016) was completed two months later (Time 2) when restrictions had been eased. In the first survey, 74% reported being willing to receive a COVID-19 vaccine. Logistic regression analyses showed that there were clear sociodemographic differences in intention to accept a vaccine for COVID-19 with intention being higher in participants of white ethnicity as compared with Black, Asian, and minority ethnic (BAME) groups, and in those with higher income levels and higher education levels. Intention was also higher in those who had “shielding” status due to underlying medical conditions. Our results suggest that future interventions, such as mass media and social marketing, need to be targeted at a range of sub-populations and diverse communities.

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  1. SciScore for 10.1101/2020.11.19.20234682: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementIRB: Ethical approval was received from the University of Strathclyde Ethics Committee (Ref: 61/05/05/2020/A Williams) prior to commencement of the study.
    Consent: Included in the survey for time one was an information sheet and consent form which participants read and signed before completing the survey.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variableDue to issues relating to the representativeness of our sample and specifically the under-representation of males and those with lower levels of educational attainment (as shown in Table 1), we carried out post-stratification weighting of these variables based on the Scottish census data to correct for these imbalances.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    All analyses were conducted using IBM SPSS Statistics (version 25) at 5% significant levels.
    SPSS
    suggested: (SPSS, RRID:SCR_002865)

    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.

    About SciScore

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