Abstract

Objective: The study aimed to determine the attitudes of parents with children aged 0-5 years towards protecting their children from COVID-19, the rate of those who hesitated to have their children vaccinated, and the factors causing hesitation.

Methods: In this descriptive, cross-sectional study, we conducted a survey with parents of children aged 0-5 years from July 2021 to May 2022.

Results: Four hundred and sixty-four parents with children 0-5 years of age were analyzed. The mean age of the participants was 34.6 ± 7.3 years and the mean number of children was 1.79 ± 0.78, the majority (72%) of which were mothers. The main source of information for COVID-19 was television channels for the participants (68.5%). Parents most often chose to wash their hands (91%) to prevent their children from contracting COVID-19. Fifty-seven percent of parents, especially those whose source of information for COVID-19 was social media platforms (OR 1.45 [1-2.1], p= 0.048), distrusted the measures they took to prevent their children from contracting COVID-19. Fifty-one percent of parents distrusted hospital measures to prevent transmission of COVID-19, and 55% were hesitant to get their children vaccinated for COVID-19. Increasing parental age (OR 1.02 [1.01-1.05], p= 0.040), having a family member who has had COVID-19 (OR 1.47 [1.01-2.16], p= 0.043), and parents’ trust in hospital COVID-19 measures (OR 2.04 [1.41-2.91], p= 0.001) have increased the desire to vaccinate their children against COVID-19.

Conclusion: Considering that vaccination is the most important step in preventing infection, information provided to parents by reliable authorities can help increase vaccination acceptance rates.

Keywords: Attitude, child, COVID-19, parents, vaccination

Copyright and license

Copyright © 2023 The author(s). This is an open-access article published by Aydın Pediatric Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited.

How to cite

1.
Çelik T, Başaran Tarhan B. Trust, distrust and skepticism: Parent’s perspective on COVID-19 prevention and vaccination in children aged 0-5 years. Trends in Pediatrics. 2023;4(2):120-126. https://doi.org/10.59213/TP.2023.97759

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