Influences on university students' intention to receive recommended vaccines: a cross-sectional survey

To explore predictors of university students' intention to receive a recommended vaccine and the main sources of vaccine-related information accessed by university students.

Participants were recruited from University College London (UK) in summer 2015.

177 university students participated. The majority of participants were female (58%), White (68%) and had no religion (58%). Participants were aged 18 to 42 (mean age=23.6).

Primary outcome measures included vaccine attitude, perceived subjective norm, perceived behavioural control, perceived self-efficacy, past receipt of recommended childhood vaccines, perceived adverse reaction to past vaccination and needle fear. As a secondary outcome sources of vaccine-related information were assessed.

Students classified as high intenders were more likely to have received all recommended childhood vaccines (OR 3.57; 95% CI 1.21 to 10.59; p=0.022), be less afraid of needles (OR 2.44; 95% CI 1.12 to 5.36; p=0.026) and to have lived in the UK until at least the age of 4 compared with those not living in the UK until at least the age of 4 (OR 0.39; 95% CI 0.18 to 0.83; p=0.015) and those who lived both in the UK and elsewhere (OR 0.42; 95% CI 0.04 to 4.06; p=0.424). The multivariable model explained 25.5% of variance in intention to receive a recommended vaccine. The internet was the most commonly reported source of vaccination information.

Findings provide an indication of the factors that may need to be addressed by interventions aiming to increase uptake of recommended vaccines in a university population. Future research is recommended using a prospective cohort design.