RESEARCH ARTICLE
Determinants of Parents’ Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practice toward Childhood Vaccination: A National Study
Omayah Nassar1
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2023Volume: 17
E-location ID: e187443462302090
Publisher ID: e187443462302090
DOI: 10.2174/18744346-v17-230223-2022-88
Article History:
Received Date: 14/6/2022Revision Received Date: 11/1/2023
Acceptance Date: 1/2/2023
Electronic publication date: 07/03/2023
Collection year: 2023
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Background:
Childhood vaccination is one of the World Health Organization's strategies to reduce vaccine-preventable diseases and children's mortality and morbidity rates. Adequate and accurate knowledge, as well as positive attitudes regarding vaccination, may increase parents’ compliance with their children’s vaccines.
Objective:
This study aimed to identify the determinants of parents’ knowledge, attitude, and practice toward childhood vaccination in Jordan.
Methods:
This is a descriptive cross-sectional study. The stratification method of sampling technique was used to split Jordan into three regions. The sample included 1477 participants. A total number of eleven Maternal and Child Health Care centers were selected as the study’s site.
Results:
Results showed that parents have sufficient knowledge regarding the importance of vaccines in maintaining a child’s health, with a mean percentage of correctly answered questions of 78.7%. However, they have inadequate knowledge regarding the adverse reactions (57.5%) and the contraindications of vaccines (61.8%). Parents had positive attitudes regarding the National Immunization Program where 97% agreed with it. However, 83% of parents had negative attitudes toward vaccine safety. Parents’ work, residency, income, and age are significant determinants of parents’ attitudes, knowledge, and practice regarding children's vaccines.
Conclusion:
The study may motivate nurses to implement more educational interventions regarding children’s vaccination to upgrade parents' knowledge with particular emphasis on parents with a low level of education and the residents of rural areas.
