How parents make decisions about their children's vaccinations.
BACKGROUND
Continued parental acceptance of childhood vaccination is essential for the maintenance of herd immunity and disease prevention. As such, understanding parents' decision-making in relation to their children's vaccinations is vitally important.


OBJECTIVE
This qualitative study sought to develop an understanding of the general process parents go through when making decisions about their children's vaccinations.


METHODS
Interviews were conducted with U.S.-born parents living in King County, Washington who had children ≤18 months of age. These interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim.


RESULTS
Through the application of grounded theory, a general decision-making process was identified. Stages in this process included: awareness, assessing and choosing, followed by either stasis or ongoing assessment. The greatest variation occurred during the assessing stage, which involved parents examining vaccination-related issues to make subsequent decisions. This research suggests that three general assessment groups exist: acceptors, who rely primarily on general social norms to make their vaccination decisions; reliers, who rely primarily on other people for information and advice; and searchers, who seek for information on their own, primarily from published sources.


CONCLUSIONS
These results imply that one-size-fits-all approaches to vaccination interventions are inappropriate. Instead, this research suggests that interventions must be targeted to parents based on how they assess vaccination.
Department of Anthropology, Texas State University, 601 University Dr., San Marcos, TX 78666, USA. Electronic address: ebrunson@txstate.edu.
Emily K
EK
Brunson
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D003657:Decision Making; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D008297:Male; D010290:Parents; D010342:Patient Acceptance of Health Care; D014611:Vaccination / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D014861:Washington; D055815:Young Adult
Decision-making; Parents; Qualitative research; VPD; Vaccination; vaccine preventable diseases