Explaining seasonality increases perceived effectiveness of influenza vaccination: An experimental study.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Doubts regarding vaccine effectiveness may prompt people to decide against a seasonal influenza vaccination. While fact boxes show the effectiveness in terms of cases prevented, people often lack knowledge about important contextual factors, for example, why the vaccine formulation needs to be updated annually, the vaccine mechanism and relevance of the antigen-virus match. Adding such contextual information could improve effectiveness perceptions.

Objective

In a preregistered online experiment, we tested whether explaining the seasonality's relevance and mechanisms behind influenza vaccine effectiveness affects people's perceptions of influenza vaccination. We compared two means of explanation (an additional expository text vs. a narrative offering an analogy to

SUBMITTER: Felgendreff L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11604028 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature