Abstract
Background Recent evidence suggests that willingness to vaccinate against COVID-19 has been declining throughout the pandemic and is low among ethnic minority groups.
Methods Observational study using a nationally representative longitudinal sample (N =7,840) from the Understanding America Study (UAS). Changes in the percentage of respondents willing to vaccinate, undecided, or intending to refuse a COVID-19 vaccine were examined over 20 survey waves from April 1 2020 to February 15 2021.
Results After a sharp decline in willingness to vaccinate against COVID-19 between April and October 2020 (from 74.0% to 52.7%), willingness to vaccinate increased by 8.1% (p <.001) to 60.8% between October 2020 and February 2021. A significant increase in willingness to vaccinate was observed across all demographic groups examined and Black (15.6% increase) and Hispanic participants (12.1% increase) showed particularly large changes.
Conclusions Willingness to vaccinate against COVID-19 increased in the US from October 2020 to February 2021.
Funding statement N/A
Competing Interest Statement
The authors have declared no competing interest.
Funding Statement
No funding.
Author Declarations
I confirm all relevant ethical guidelines have been followed, and any necessary IRB and/or ethics committee approvals have been obtained.
Yes
The details of the IRB/oversight body that provided approval or exemption for the research described are given below:
Maynooth University Social Research Ethics Sub-Committee (SRESC). It is official policy of the SRESC that "ethical approval is not required for secondary use of anonymous data." which includes the two studies in this paper.
All necessary patient/participant consent has been obtained and the appropriate institutional forms have been archived.
Yes
I understand that all clinical trials and any other prospective interventional studies must be registered with an ICMJE-approved registry, such as ClinicalTrials.gov. I confirm that any such study reported in the manuscript has been registered and the trial registration ID is provided (note: if posting a prospective study registered retrospectively, please provide a statement in the trial ID field explaining why the study was not registered in advance).
Yes
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Yes
Footnotes
Correction to COVID-19 vaccination rate figures cited in introduction section.
Data Availability
NA