College students’ COVID-19 vaccine beliefs and intentions: Implications for interventions

Abstract

On college campuses, effective management of vaccine-preventable transmissible pathogens requires understanding student vaccination intentions. This is necessary for developing and tailoring health messaging to maximize uptake of health information and vaccines. The current study explored students’ beliefs and attitudes about vaccines in general, and the new COVID-19 vaccines specifically. This study provides insights into effective health messaging needed to rapidly increase COVID-19 vaccination on college campuses—information that will continue to be informative in future academic years across a broad scope of pathogens. Data were collected from 696 undergraduate students ages 18–29 years old enrolled in a large public university in the Northeast during fall 2020. Data were collected via an online survey. Overall, we found COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in college students correlated strongly with some concerns about vaccines in general as well as with concerns specific to COVID-19 vaccines. Taken together, these results provide further insight for message development and delivery and can inform more effective interventions to advance critical public health outcomes on college campuses beyond the current pandemic.

Keywords:

• College students
• COVID-19
• political identity
• trust
• vaccination
• vaccine hesitancy
• vaccines

Acknowledgments

The authors thank the members of the D4A Action Research Group: Dee Bagshaw, Clinical & Translational Science Institute; Cyndi Flanagan, Clinical Research Center; Matthew Ferrari, Dept. of Biology & Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences; Thomas Gates, Social Science Research Institute; Margeaux Gray, Dept. of Biobehavioral Health; Suresh Kuchipudi, Animal Diagnostic Lab; Vivek Kapur, Dept. of Animal Science and the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences; Stephanie Lanza, Dept. of Biobehavioral Health and the Prevention Research Center; James Marden, Dept. of Biology & Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences; Susan McHale, Dept. of Human Development and Family Studies and the Social Science Research Institute; Glenda Palmer, Social Science Research Institute; Andrew Read, Depts. of Biology and Entomology, and the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences; Connie Rogers, Dept. of Nutritional Sciences and the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences; and Charima Young, Penn State Office of Government and Community Relations.

Conflict of interest disclosure

The authors have no conflicts of interest to report. The authors confirm that the research presented in this article met the ethical guidelines, including adherence to the legal requirements, of the United States of America and received approval from the Institutional Review Board of the Pennsylvania State University.

IRB approval

This project was approved by the Pennsylvania State University IRB, #00015547.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Office of the Provost and the Clinical and Translational Science Institute, the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences, and the Social Science Research Institute at the Pennsylvania State University.