Open AccessTrust in Authorities and Demographic Factors Affect Vaccine Acceptance During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Cyprus
Author(s) -
Nikos Konstantinou,
Stella A. Nicolaou,
Christos Petrou,
Myrtani Pieri
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
european journal of psychology open
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2673-8627
DOI - 10.1024/2673-8627/a000006
Subject(s) - pandemic , affect (linguistics) , vaccination , psychological intervention , public health , covid-19 , psychology , medicine , environmental health , family medicine , immunology , disease , nursing , infectious disease (medical specialty) , communication , pathology
. The COVID-19 pandemic has had a devastating impact on all aspects of human life. Accurately measuring vaccine acceptance and understanding the factors that influence vaccine attitudes and behaviors is crucial to designing public-health interventions to reduce the impact of COVID-19 through vaccinations. The current study adapted the vaccine acceptance scale ( Sarathchandra et al., 2018 ) to the Greek language and assessed the relationship between key components of vaccine acceptance to COVID-19 vaccine beliefs and attitudes, personal and family vaccination history and attitudes, and demographic variables (age, sex, education, and having children). The adapted vaccine acceptance instrument was found to have high internal consistency reliability. Further analyses indicated that younger and less-educated individuals are more vaccine-hesitant, and that vaccine acceptance is influenced by trust in authorities. These findings may have implications for understanding vaccine hesitancy and for the design and implementation of vaccine-related public health policies.