Understanding Public Perceptions of Benefits and Risks of Childhood Vaccinations in the United States

"...the study's findings provide practical implications for immunization policy as government and health authorities emphasize quality of shared knowledge as a broad policy direction."

In the face of "a growing public health concern accompanying the reemerging threat of preventable diseases", such as measles, in the United States (US), this research seeks to explain variations in the perceived benefits and risks of vaccinations amongst the general public in that country. One finding: Two groups of people - those who have greater trust of healthcare professionals and possess more knowledge about vaccines and those who are older, more educated, and more affluent - are more likely to believe that the benefits of vaccinations outweigh the risks.

With the goal of understanding why different people have different perceptions about the benefits and risks of childhood vaccinations, the researcher, Geoboo Song, analysed data from an internet survey of 1,213 American adults conducted in 2010.

In analysing this data, Song draws from Mary Douglas and Aaron Wildavsky's grid-group cultural theory of risk perception, which posits that there are 4 distinctive cultural types of individuals - hierarch, individualist, egalitarian, and fatalist - who assess risk in ways that conform with their intrinsic values. Song found that strong hierarchs, who tend to place trust in authority figures and experts, generally believe that the benefits of vaccinations outweigh the risks. By contrast, those with a strong fatalist tendency are inclined to emphasise risks and downplay benefits while conceiving of a low vaccination benefit-to-risk ratio. Situated between hierarchs and fatalists, strong egalitarians are prone to perceive greater benefits, smaller risks, and a more positive benefit-to-risk ratio than strong individualists.

In short, the analytical results suggest that individuals' cultural predispositions contribute to the formation of their perceptions pertaining to vaccine benefits and risks at both societal and individual levels, in conjunction with other factors suggested by previous risk perception literature, such as perceived prevalence of diseases, trust, knowledge level, and demographic characteristics.

Based on this research, Song advises that: "Simply providing scientific facts regarding how great vaccine benefits are, and how trivial the risk, as part of a government vaccine campaign, for instance, would work well for strong hierarchs but not for other cultural types. People tend to listen to what they want to hear and accept new information only if it is congruent with what they already believe. For people who may be reluctant to vaccinate their children, health authorities should try to convey culturally nuanced narratives with accessible language."