The willingness of Chinese adults to receive the COVID-19 vaccine and its associated factors at the early stage of the vaccination programme: a network analysis
The first comprehensive network analysis of vaccination willingness at the early stage of COVID-19 vaccination was performed.
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Attitude towards vaccines was the most critical factor affecting vaccination willingness.
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Emotional state and age were also important in the network.
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Positive coping tendency, health status and neurasthenia were directly related to attitude towards vaccines.
Abstract
Background
The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has been a continuous global threat since the first identification of the disease in December 2019. COVID-19 vaccination is a crucial preventive approach that can halt this pandemic. However, many factors affect the willingness of the public to be vaccinated against COVID-19 at the early stage of the vaccination programme. We used network analysis to investigate the interrelation of vaccination willingness and its associated factors.
Methods
A population-representative sample of 539 Chinese adults completed a battery of online self-assessments, including those on vaccination willingness, health status, attitude towards vaccines, COVID-19-related psychological elements and other variables. Network analysis was performed using the R qgraph package.
Results
In total, 445 (82.6%) participants scored high on their willingness to vaccinate. Attitude towards vaccines, the influence of people around an individual and health status were directly significantly related to vaccination willingness. The betweenness of age was the highest and, the emotional states had the strongest centrality.
Limitations
Network analysis is not sufficient to determine the causal relationships of the links between nodes. In addition, there are other latent essential elements that were not evaluated. Finally, the sample size was relatively small.
Conclusion
Network analysis showed that attitude toward vaccines and emotional states are the most critical factors affecting vaccination willingness, which indicates that we should pay attention to the impact of the dissemination of Internet information on vaccination willingness and public emotional states during a pandemic which is very important for promoting vaccination programs.
