The COVID-19 pandemic has been an ongoing disaster that has devasted millions of lives. With the development of COVID-19 vaccines in late 2020, there was a potential for populations to gain artificial active immunity in order to prevent future outbreaks. However, despite successful clinical trials, millions of citizens have been hesitant to receive the COVID-19 vaccines (Khubchandani et al., 2021). Demographics of the most prominent US vaccine-hesitant populations consist of ethnic/racial minorities and Republicans groups (Khubchandani et al., 2021). Little information is known about COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in colleges and universities. Colleges provide an elevated risk for infection through their communal residencies, the reemergence of campus activities, and continuous travel to home (Sharma et al., 2021).
This study explored COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in UCF college students and explored potential pathways to achieve higher vaccination rates. Potentially believed COVID-19 misinformation was also studied. A COVID-19 opinion survey was designed and distributed to the UCF college population. Two hypotheses were made for this study: (1) There is a significant effect on vaccination status among people of different political parties, field of study, living conditions, masking frequency, and scores on the knowledge-based questions portion. (2) There will be a significant effect on knowledge-based scores with political party and field of study. The results were analyzed using Chi-square, one-way ANOVA, or two-way ANOVA on SPSS. The results showed a significant effect on vaccination status in political parties, masking frequency in class, and scores on the knowledge-based survey questions. There was no significance with race/ethnicity and field of study. There was a significant effect on the knowledge-based survey questions with political party and field of study. Potential side effects and the vaccines being seen as ineffective were the top two reasons that students choose not to vaccinate.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ucf.edu/oai:stars.library.ucf.edu:honorstheses-2357 |
| Date | 01 January 2022 |
| Creators | Barthel, Justin A |
| Publisher | STARS |
| Source Sets | University of Central Florida |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Honors Undergraduate Theses |
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