Meeting abstract
PARENTS' ATTITUDES TOWARDS VACCINATION OF CHILDREN IN POŽEGA AREA IN RELATION TO HEALTH LITERACY
Mirjana Raguž
orcid.org/0000-0002-6164-258X
; Health center of Požega-Slavonia county, Matije Gupca 10, Požega, Croatia
Damir Matoković
; General county hospital Požega, Osječka 107, Požega, Croatia; Faculty of Medicine Osijek, J. Hutlera 10, Osijek, Croatia
Božica Lovrić
orcid.org/0000-0002-2762-6439
; General county hospital Požega, Osječka 107, Požega, Croatia
Vlasta Raštegorac
; Health center of Požega-Slavonia county, Matije Gupca 10, Požega, Croatia
Đemenina Zečević
orcid.org/0000-0002-2152-0342
; Health center of Požega-Slavonia county, Matije Gupca 10, Požega, Croatia
Abstract
Introduction: Vaccination is the greatest medical success of the 20th century. In the last few years there has been a decrease in grain coverage, because of the rejection or delay of vaccination by parents, so it increases the risk of re-emergence of the disease that was in the phase of elimination.
Aim: To examine the attitudes of pre-school age children's parents towards vaccination, examine their health literacy, and the link between parents' health literacy and their attitudes towards vaccination.
Methods: The research was conducted in the population of parents of preschool children. The study involved 120 respondents. A survey questionnaire containing the demographic data and questions about attitudes towards vaccination and a questionnaire for assessing health literacy was used for the study, Short Assessmentof Health Literacy for Spanish Adults
(SAHLSA-50 ) in Croatian. Thestatistical package IBM SPSS 23 was used to analyse the data. The descriptive data used for the continuous variables are the arithmetic mean (M), the standard deviation (SD) and the range, and the number of subjects was categorically displayed.
Results: The research has shown that most respondents meet the legal obligation to vaccinate (95.8%) and consider that vaccination should be mandatory (88.3%).The biggest source of vaccine concerns is the fear of side effects which almost every other responder fears. The results show that most demographic and socioeconomic factors do not affect attitudes about vaccination. When examining the differences in the level of education, there was a significant difference in the levels of health literacy. Pupils with college and university degree have more pronounced health literacy (p<0.01). The research did not provide a link between medical literacy and attitudes towards vaccination.
Conclusions: This research has shown that most respondents have positive attitudes towards vaccination, and have a pronounced health literacy. Most demographic and socioeconomic factors do not affect attitudes about vaccination.
Keywords
vaccination; children; parental attitudes; health literacy
Hrčak ID:
218599
URI
Publication date:
31.12.2018.
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