COVID-19 Vaccine Education: Is It Effective?

Abstract

The article presents experiment findings to verify the educational activities program in the field of COVID-19 vaccine prevention for students. The study was conducted at the Moscow State University of Psychology and Education, the analytical sample size is N = 780. Five aspects (as measuring scales) of attitudes towards vaccination against COVID-19 were identified: the benefits of vaccination against coronavirus for a person and society; denial of the coronavirus danger and hope for natural immunity; fear of the side effects of vaccination against coronavirus and distrust of vaccination safety information; confidence in the serious negative consequences of the coronavirus vaccine; disbelief in the proven effectiveness of Russian vaccines at the international level. A comparative analysis of the effectiveness of 4 strategies for influencing student's attitudes to vaccination against COVID-19 was carried out: lectures only (CG), lectures in combination with seminars / webinars in the traditional format (EG1), with discussions of real life cases related to vaccination and its effects (EG2), with holding student's debates (EG3). There are no gender differences between groups. There are differences in age, but the mean difference does not exceed 2 years. At the ascertaining stage, there are no differences on the scales; at the control stage, differences are revealed. On all 5 scales, positive and negative effects in the whole sample are almost equally likely. It was not possible to single out a fundamentally best strategy for educational influence. In general, the effectiveness of educational activities is somewhat greater when conducting lectures in combination with various kinds of seminars compared to lectures alone, but the effectiveness is low everywhere. Cohen's d standard effect sizes do not exceed 0,44. Slightly higher is efficiency when conducting lectures in combination with traditional seminars / webinars or case studies. The student's debates holding strategy did not meet expectations. A number of significant correlations were found between various aspects of attitudes towards vaccination with natural science literacy, logical thinking, verbal intelligence, the degree of fear of COVID-19, personal and situational anxiety. All correlations are weak, but their direction is as expected.