Context matters: How to research vaccine attitudes and uptake after the COVID-19 crisis

ABSTRACT

The pandemic dramatically accelerated research on vaccine attitudes and uptake, a field which mobilizes researchers from the social sciences and humanities as well as biomedical and public health disciplines. The field has the potential to contribute much more, but the growth in research and the deeper connections between disciplines brings challenges as well as opportunities. This perspective article assesses the recent development of the field, exploring progress whilst emphasizing that not enough attention has been paid to national and local contexts. This lack of contextual attention limits the progress of research and hinders our capacity to learn from the COVID-19 crisis. We suggest three concrete responses: building and recognizing new publishing formats for reporting and synthesizing studies at a country level; establishing country-level interdisciplinary networks to connect research and praxis; and strengthening international comparative survey work by enhancing the focus on local contextual factors.

KEYWORDS:

• Vaccine hesitancy
• social sciences
• COVID-19
• research community
• interdisciplinarity

Acknowledgments

PPW, PV and JKW’s work is part of a project which has been labeled as a National Research Priority by the National Orientation Committee for Therapeutic Trials and other researches on COVID-19 (CAPNET project 0344). They would like to acknowledge ANRS | Emerging infectious diseases for their scientific support, the French Ministry of Health and Prevention and the French Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation for their funding and support.

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

This study is part of a project labeled as a National Research Priority by the National Orientation Committee for Therapeutic Trials and other researches on Covid-19 (CAPNET project 0344). The investigators would like to acknowledge ANRS | Emerging infectious diseases for their scientific support, the French Ministry of Health and Prevention and the French Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation for their funding and support.