Policy-Relevant Attitudes Toward COVID-19 Vaccination: Associations With Demography, Health Risk, and Social and Political Factors.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Paul KT
PROVIDER: S-EPMC8290156 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:Anti-transgender policies and state legislative initiatives that focus on school bathroom use and hormone use have emerged in recent years. These policies are generally written by and voted on by cisgender people, and as such, it is crucial to understand influences on nonaffirming attitudes toward policies that can impact trans youth. The present study aimed to extend research on transphobic attitudes in general to attitudes toward policies that impact youth undergoing transition. Latent variable covariances and structural equation modeling were used to test the relations between transphobia, genderism, homophobia, need for closure, sexual orientation, social dominance orientation, attitudes toward sexual minorities, beliefs about gender roles, aggression, religious fundamentalism, and contact with sexual and gender minority individuals, as they are related to attitudes toward hormone use and bathroom use for trans youth. Analyses of data from a sample of 248 cisgender adults indicated that genderism and transphobia was associated with attitudes toward gender-affirming hormone use and bathroom use for trans youth; need for closure was associated with gender-affirming attitudes toward bathroom use, but was not associated with hormone use. Sexual orientation was linked to attitudes toward gender-affirming policies, such that nonheterosexual participants had more affirming attitudes toward trans youths' bathroom use, but not hormone use. Implications for future research, advocacy efforts to promote rights for trans youth, and clinical work with trans youth and/or parents/guardians of trans youth are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).
| S-EPMC10905978 | biostudies-literature
Project description:IntroductionPolitical polarization has increased in the USA within recent years. Studies have shown Republicans are less likely to accept COVID-19 vaccinations than Democrats; however, little is known regarding the association between COVID-19 vaccination acceptance and political polarization.MethodsWe used data from a nationally-representative survey of 1427 participants conducted between 9 February 2021 and 17 February 2021. We estimated multivariate-adjusted odds ratios for COVID-19 vaccination intent and receipt according to perceived political polarization (measured as the perceived size of the ideological gap between Democrats and Republicans), political party affiliation, and social trust, controlling for demographic and socioeconomic factors.ResultsAmong participants perceiving high levels of polarization, Republicans (versus Democrats) reported a 90% lower odds of vaccination intent (OR = 0.10 [0.05, 0.19], P < 0.001). Participants with high (versus low) social trust and low perceived polarization had a 2-folder higher vaccination intent (OR = 2.39 [1.34, 4.21], P = 0.003); this association was substantially weaker in the high perceived polarization group.ConclusionsHigh perceived levels of political polarization appear to magnify the decrease in the odds of receiving the COVID-19 vaccine and the intent to get vaccinated among Republicans versus Democrats. Political polarization may further attenuate the protective associations of high social capital with vaccination.
| S-EPMC9383304 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The COVID-19 pandemic has forced governments to impose major restrictions on individual freedom in order to stop the spread of the virus. With the successful development of a vaccine, these restrictions are likely to become obsolete-on the condition that people get vaccinated. However, parts of the population have reservations against vaccination. While this is not a recent phenomenon, it might prove a critical one in the context of current attempts to manage the COVID-19 pandemic. Consequently, the task of designing policies suitable for attaining high levels of vaccination deserves enhanced attention. In this study, we use data from the Eurobarometer survey fielded in March 2019. They show that 39% of Europeans consider vaccines to cause the diseases which they should protect against, that 50% believe vaccines have serious side effects, that 32% think that vaccines weaken the immune system, and that 10% do not believe vaccines are tested rigorously before authorization. We find that-even when controlling for important individual-level factors-ideological extremism on both ends of the spectrum explains skepticism of vaccination. We conclude that policymakers must either politicize the issue or form broad alliances among parties and societal groups in order to increase trust in and public support for the vaccines in general and for vaccines against COVID-19 in particular, since the latter were developed in a very short time period and resulted-in particular in case of the AstraZeneca vaccine-in reservations because of the effectiveness and side effects of the new vaccines.Supplementary informationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11077-021-09428-0.
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Project description:The large inflow of asylum-seekers in recent years has heralded a diversification in adopted asylum policies across European societies. Although a growing body of research has addressed these versatile approaches and their implications for the European integration project, insight into the social basis of these restrictive or open asylum policies remains underdeveloped. Hence, the current study provides detailed insight into public preferences for asylum policies and offers a new understanding of how these attitudes are affected by diverging socio-economic realities across Europe. In addition, this paper considers the role of individual factors that coincide with publicly adopted frames in contemporary asylum debates. In particular, to explain how contextual differences reflect on opinion climates, the impacts of the policy, economic, and migratory context are studied. On the individual-level, we focus on threat perception and human values, which represent humanitarian, economic, and cultural frames. To explore these relations, data on 20 countries from the European Social Survey Round 8 (2016) are analyzed through a multilevel structural equation modeling approach. Results indicate that, on the contextual-level, only unemployment rates have a significant impact and, rather surprisingly, lower unemployment rates provoke a more negative opinion climate. Yet, this relationship seems to be largely driven by some specific countries that are characterized by large unemployment rates and relatively positive opinion climates simultaneously. The migratory and policy context, on the other hand, do not influence attitudes toward asylum policy. This indicates that it is not necessarily the countries facing the largest inflow of asylum-seekers or issuing the most positive decisions on asylum applications that have the most restrictive opinion climates. As shown by the important roles of human values and threat perceptions, which represent widely adopted frames, public discourses seem much more important in explaining attitudes toward asylum policy across Europe.
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Project description:Australia is a relative laggard on climate policy, amidst social and political fractures despite rising support for climate policy in opinion polls. In the 2019 Australian federal election, which was dubbed the 'climate election', the opposition campaigned on comparatively ambitious climate action but the government was returned on a status quo policy. We explore the social-political determinants of climate attitudes and how they are positioned in relation to voting behaviour, in the context of the 2019 election. We use a large nationally representative survey of Australian voters (n = 2,033), and employ univariate and multivariate ordinal logistic regression models to uncover correlates. We find that a large majority of voters think it is important for Australia to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However, the importance given to emissions reductions is sharply divided along lines of political party preference. Holding pro-climate action attitudes consistently correlates with voting for progressive political parties and having higher levels of education. We also find a strong age cohort divide, with younger people holding stronger pro-climate attitudes than older people, raising the question whether we are seeing the emergence of a new generation expressing strong pro-climate action and progressive political attitudes that will persist over time. We conduct population ageing scenarios to project changes to public opinion, by age group, into the future. These indicate that strong support for climate action would increase by about four percentage points over the coming decade as younger voters replace the old, if attitudes within cohorts remained fixed. We conclude that while cleavages in climate attitudes in Australia are set to continue, efforts to promote climate delay are bound to have a limited shelf life as a growing majority of voters accepts the need for climate action.
| S-EPMC7990191 | biostudies-literature
Project description:A foundational question in the social sciences concerns the interplay of underlying causes in the formation of people's political beliefs and prejudices. What role, if any, do genes, environmental influences, or personality dispositions play? Social dominance orientation (SDO), an influential index of people's general attitudes toward intergroup hierarchy, correlates robustly with political beliefs. SDO consists of the subdimensions SDO-dominance (SDO-D), which is the desire people have for some groups to be actively oppressed by others, and SDO-egalitarianism (SDO-E), a preference for intergroup inequality. Using a twin design (n = 1,987), we investigate whether the desire for intergroup dominance and inequality makes up a genetically grounded behavioral syndrome. Specifically, we investigate the heritability of SDO, in addition to whether it genetically correlates with support for political policies concerning the distribution of power and resources to different social groups. In addition to moderate heritability estimates for SDO-D and SDO-E (37% and 24%, respectively), we find that the genetic correlation between these subdimensions and political attitudes was overall high (mean genetic correlation 0.51), while the environmental correlation was very low (mean environmental correlation 0.08). This suggests that the relationship between political attitudes and SDO-D and SDO-E is grounded in common genetics, such that the desire for (versus opposition to) intergroup inequality and support for political attitudes that serve to enhance (versus attenuate) societal disparities form convergent strategies for navigating group-based dominance hierarchies.
| S-EPMC6731660 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Background While HPV vaccination uptake in Sweden is quite high, at around 80%, vaccine hesitancy remains an issue in countries throughout Europe. The latter can be related to a contemporary context of increased contestation of expert knowledge and of a large share of information on health-related issues including vaccination today being sought via the internet. Still, there is a paucity of recent research on attitudes toward the HPV vaccine in a larger sample of the population in Sweden. This survey study assesses such attitudes and any correlations between vaccine hesitancy and sociodemographic characteristics, trust in healthcare and other societal institutions, and evaluation of the reliability of different sources of information. Methods The validated survey questionnaire was distributed to adult women in Sweden (n = 2,000), via a nationally representative web panel. The response rate was 37%. Aside from descriptive statistics, associations between vaccine hesitancy and sociodemographic and other variables were computed using logistic regressions and expressed as odds ratios (ORs) with 95% confidence intervals (95% CIs). Results Our results show a positive attitude toward HPV vaccination overall. Still, some degree of HPV vaccine hesitancy was indicated by 33.8% of the respondents, and more pronounced hesitancy by 7.6%. Regarding vaccination in general, a very positive attitude was indicated by 55%. HPV vaccine hesitancy was associated with low education and low income and strongly associated with a lack of confidence in healthcare and other societal institutions. It was also correlated with a self-assessed lack of access to, and ability to assess the origin, quality and reliability of, information about the HPV vaccine. Conclusion Efforts to provide transparent information about HPV vaccination should be combined with healthcare providers being open to discuss vaccine concerns with patients and avoiding practices that do not promote trust.
| S-EPMC9127737 | biostudies-literature
Project description:ObjectivesPopulation compliance greatly influences the effectiveness of vaccination and non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) for the curtaining of COVID-19 transmission. We aimed to determine the conceptual framework of potential factors that influence compliance.Study designThis was a cross-sectional study.MethodsQuestionnaires were used to survey population attitudes toward vaccination and NPIs in China. Confirmatory factor analysis of the survey data by structural equation model was used to define the pros and cons factors of attitudes. The strength and direction of each factor's effect on population attitudes were illustrated by Bayesian network analysis.ResultsA total of 1700 respondents aged 18-70 years were surveyed with a panel of 34 questionnaires. Of these questionnaires, the confirmatory factor and structural equation model analysis identified five categories contributing to positive attitudes, including response efficiency, willingness and behavior, trust, cues to action, and knowledge, as well as four categories contributing to negative attitudes, including autonomy, perceived barriers, threat, and mental status. Bayesian networks revealed that cues to action produced a driving force for positive attitudes, followed by willingness and behavior, trust, response efficiency, and knowledge, whereas perceived barriers produced a driving force for negative attitudes, followed by autonomy and threat.ConclusionsThis study established a concise and representative list of questionnaires that could be applied to investigate the conceptual framework of potential pros and cons factors of attitudes toward vaccination and NPIs for COVID-19 prevention. The factors with driving forces should be addressed with a priority to effectively improve population compliance.
| S-EPMC9365865 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundIn response to the COVID-19 pandemic, countries are introducing digital passports that allow citizens to return to normal activities if they were previously infected with (immunity passport) or vaccinated against (vaccination passport) SARS-CoV-2. To be effective, policy decision-makers must know whether these passports will be widely accepted by the public and under what conditions. This study focuses attention on immunity passports, as these may prove useful in countries both with and without an existing COVID-19 vaccination program; however, our general findings also extend to vaccination passports.ObjectiveWe aimed to assess attitudes toward the introduction of immunity passports in six countries, and determine what social, personal, and contextual factors predicted their support.MethodsWe collected 13,678 participants through online representative sampling across six countries-Australia, Japan, Taiwan, Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom-during April to May of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, and assessed attitudes and support for the introduction of immunity passports.ResultsImmunity passport support was moderate to low, being the highest in Germany (775/1507 participants, 51.43%) and the United Kingdom (759/1484, 51.15%); followed by Taiwan (2841/5989, 47.44%), Australia (963/2086, 46.16%), and Spain (693/1491, 46.48%); and was the lowest in Japan (241/1081, 22.94%). Bayesian generalized linear mixed effects modeling was used to assess predictive factors for immunity passport support across countries. International results showed neoliberal worldviews (odds ratio [OR] 1.17, 95% CI 1.13-1.22), personal concern (OR 1.07, 95% CI 1.00-1.16), perceived virus severity (OR 1.07, 95% CI 1.01-1.14), the fairness of immunity passports (OR 2.51, 95% CI 2.36-2.66), liking immunity passports (OR 2.77, 95% CI 2.61-2.94), and a willingness to become infected to gain an immunity passport (OR 1.6, 95% CI 1.51-1.68) were all predictive factors of immunity passport support. By contrast, gender (woman; OR 0.9, 95% CI 0.82-0.98), immunity passport concern (OR 0.61, 95% CI 0.57-0.65), and risk of harm to society (OR 0.71, 95% CI 0.67-0.76) predicted a decrease in support for immunity passports. Minor differences in predictive factors were found between countries and results were modeled separately to provide national accounts of these data.ConclusionsOur research suggests that support for immunity passports is predicted by the personal benefits and societal risks they confer. These findings generalized across six countries and may also prove informative for the introduction of vaccination passports, helping policymakers to introduce effective COVID-19 passport policies in these six countries and around the world.
| S-EPMC9290331 | biostudies-literature