Medical and non-medical students’ knowledge, attitude and willingness towards the COVID-19 vaccine in China: a cross-sectional online survey

ABSTRACT

In the context of the novel Coronavirus outbreak and China’s official policy of free vaccination against COVID-19 for all, medical students’ attitudes and knowledge toward vaccines can influence public acceptance to some extent, however, the large base of non-medical students cannot be ignored. We aimed to investigate the knowledge, attitude, and willingness toward the COVID-19 vaccine among medical and non-medical students. Online surveys were completed by 652 medical students and 590 non-medical students to compare differences in knowledge and attitude of COVID-19 vaccine and vaccination willingness from three universities in the Zhejiang Province. The awareness rate of the vaccine among medical students (65.3%) was higher than that of non-medical students (53.6%). The approval rate of medical students for the safety and efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccine was higher than that of non-medical students. 81.8% of university students were willing to be vaccinated against COVID-19; Multiple stepwise regression analyses showed that lower class grades, rural students’ origin, COVID-19 vaccine attitude and higher cognition level of health self-management influenced the acceptance of COVID-19 vaccination among medical students. However, urban origin, COVID-19 vaccine attitude were the factors hindering non-medical students’ vaccination against COVID-19. The knowledge, attitude and willingness toward the COVID-19 vaccine on medical and non-medical students had different characteristics. Moreover, health self-management was associated with COVID-19 vaccination willingness. Staff involved in the university should pay more attention to the self-managementability of students, send out accurate and transparent information to enhance their cognitive level, further improving the students’ willingness to receive the COVID-19 vaccine.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19 vaccination
• knowledge
• attitude
• willingness
• health self-management
• medical and non-medical student

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Contributor

GLY conceived and designed this study, wrote the first draft of the manuscript; SSM, DUU, HY, WJY performed this study and analyzed the data; CMJ, MQF contributed the introduction and discussion; WXL critically reviewed the manuscript. All authors contributed to and approved the final manuscript.

Additional information

Funding

The present study was supported by grants from the Teaching reform research project of Hangzhou Normal University School of Nursing [Nos. HLXYJG202105].