Toward Multidimensional Message Tailoring to Address COVID-19 and Influenza Vaccine-Hesitancy: A Latent Profile Analysis Approach

ABSTRACT

Vaccines remain the best strategy as the COVID-19 pandemic enters into later stages and governments begin to shed pandemic-control measures. Vaccine hesitancy continues to be a major obstacle in efforts to end the pandemic. This study reports formative evaluation research that adopted a multidimensional approach using latent profile analysis to audience segmentation and message targeting. Within the framework of the integrated behavioral model, data were collected from a US national survey to explore the dimensions in which vaccine-confident vs. -hesitant individuals differed significantly across the topics of COVID-19 and influenza. Latent profile analyses were performed to identify subgroups and establish measurement invariance between COVID-19 and influenza vaccines. Matching message strategies were proposed for the distinctive characteristics of the subgroups for both topics and to be tested in future research.

Disclosure statement

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

Data availability statement

Data file is available at: https://osf.io/acxur/?view_only=48851d578711412bbb2b5e0c56c225b9.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported in part by a research grant from the Investigator Initiated Studies Program of Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp [MISP #100904]. The opinions expressed in this paper are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp.