Measuring Vaccine Acceptance and Knowledge within Health Professions Education
Description
To assess vaccination attitudes, practices, and knowledge among future practicing health professionals, we conducted a survey of health professions students in their initial stages of graduate health sciences education. We also investigated the association of health professions program with key attitudes towards vaccine acceptance and knowledge of vaccination. This data set is relevant for figure 1 and tables 3, 4, and 5 of our paper titled Measuring Vaccine Acceptance and Knowledge within Health Professions Education. Please review steps to reproduce in order to understand what the data is, how it was gathered, and how to interpret and use it.
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Steps to reproduce
An anonymous, self-reporting survey was developed with questions pertaining to demographics, vaccine attitudes, and knowledge about vaccination. 16 questions were used to assess vaccine acceptance. These 16 items were adapted from survey questions that addressed vaccine hesitancy in the WHO Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization (SAGE) Vaccine Hesitancy Matrix. The remaining 17 items were factual multiple-choice questions selected by the researchers to represent general knowledge about vaccine preventable diseases and immunology concepts emphasized in healthcare program curricula. The survey was distributed by email to health professions students at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA from July 2019 to November 2020. The content of the emails explained the purpose of the study and the voluntary nature of the survey. Survey participation was elicited from two medical colleges, one dental college, one optometry college, one pharmacy college, and one biomedical science graduate program. A consent statement was included at the beginning of the survey and participants consented by proceeding with the survey. The collected data did not include identifying information, was anonymized, and was kept confidential on a secure survey platform. This study was reviewed and approved by the Nova Southeastern University Institutional Review Board, Approval Number 2019-349. SAS JMP Pro 15.1.0 (SAS Institute, Cary, NC, USA) was used to analyze the quantitative data. The demographic data values were expressed as mean ± standard error of the mean (SEM). The data was analyzed and assessed using Fischer’s Exact Test and One-way Welch’s ANOVA with Games-Howell post hoc tests to make comparisons between the different programs. Spearman correlation analysis was used to compare vaccine acceptance with vaccination knowledge. A p value of < 0.05 was considered statistically significant. Additionally, data from some vaccine acceptance attitude questions was inverted for analysis. While several questions with “yes” responses reflected positive responses, this inverted data was analyzed with “no” answers reflecting positive responses with respect to vaccine acceptance attitudes.