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How orthodox protestant parents decide on the vaccination of their children: a qualitative study Full Text
BMC Public Health, 06/21/2012
Ruijs WLM et al. – Policy makers and health care professionals should stimulate orthodox protestant parents to make a deliberate vaccination choice but also realize that a deliberate choice does not necessarily mean a choice to vaccinate.
Methods- To gain insight into how orthodox protestant parents decide on vaccination, what arguments they use, and the consequences of their decisions, they conducted an in-depth interview study of both vaccinating and non-vaccinating orthodox protestant parents selected via purposeful sampling.
- The initial coding results were reviewed, discussed, and refined by the analysts until consensus was reached.
- Emerging concepts were assessed for consistency using the constant comparative method from grounded theory.
- After 27 interviews, data saturation was reached. Based on characteristics of the decision-making process (tradition vs. deliberation) and outcome (vaccinate or not), 4 subgroups of parents could be distinguished: traditionally non-vaccinating parents, deliberately non-vaccinating parents, deliberately vaccinating parents, and traditionally vaccinating parents.
- Except for the traditionally vaccinating parents, all used predominantly religious arguments to justify their vaccination decisions.
- Also with the exception of the traditionally vaccinating parents, all reported facing fears that they had made the wrong decision.
- This fear was most tangible among the deliberately vaccinating parents who thought they might be punished immediately by God for vaccinating their children and interpreted any side effects as a sign to stop vaccinating.
