Excluding numeric side-effect information produces lower vaccine intentions

Presenter: Eliza Lawrence – Earth Sciences

Faculty Mentor(s): Ellen Peters, Brittany Shoots-Reinhard

Session: (In-Person) Poster Presentation

Encouraging vaccine uptake is important to reducing the impact of infectious disease. However, negative attitudes and vaccine hesitancy, due in part to worry about side effects, are obstacles to achieving high vaccination rates. Provided vaccine information sheets typically include a list of side effects without numeric information about their likelihoods, but providing such numbers may yield benefits. We investigated the effect of providing numeric information about side-effect likelihood (“1%”) and verbal labels (“uncommon”) on intentions to get a hypothetical vaccine, reasons for the vaccination decision, and risk overestimation. In a diverse, online, convenience sample (N=595), providing numeric information increased vaccine intentions—70% of those who received numeric information were predicted to be moderately or extremely likely to vaccinate compared to only 54% of those who did not receive numeric information (p<.001), controlling for age, gender, race, education, and political ideology. Participants receiving numeric information were less likely to overestimate side-effect likelihood. Among the vaccine-hesitant, 43% of those provided numeric information and verbal labels were predicted to be moderately or extremely likely to get vaccinated vs. only 24% of those given a list of side effects (p<.001). We conclude that the standard practice of not providing numeric information about side-effect likelihood leads to a less-informed public who is less likely to vacci.

 

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