Prevalence of Turkish Parent Refusal and Hesitance Rate and Its Associated Factors in Childhood Vaccination

Abstract

The Rejection of childhood vaccination is still a major issue in many countries. The aim of the study was to assess prevalence of Turkish parent refusal and hesitance rate and its associated factors in Childhood vaccination. A crosssectional study was carried out at the General Pediatric Poly Clinic of Ankara Keçören Training and Research Hospital from January – to April 2020. Data was collected using a questionnaire via face to face interviews with parents. We included parents who have 6 months to 7 years old children, who visited the clinic during the study period and who accepted to join the study. A total of 809 mothers and 132 fathers participated in the survey. Among the parents, 1.2% of them refused the vaccination of their children and 4.8 % of them had incomplete vaccination of their children. More than half (67.4%) of the parents have a high level of knowledge about vaccines. knowledge level was statistically significantly different based on the participant’s occupation, income, education background and father’s age (P <0.05). A majority (72.2%) of the participants had good attitudes toward childhood vaccination, there is no statistically significance based on their occupation, age, income and education background (P > 0.05). Parents with one child had bad attitudes towards vaccines (35.4%). Keywords: Childhood vaccine; vaccine hesitance; vaccine rejection