Parental preferences for a mandatory vaccination scheme in England: A discrete choice experiment

Mandatory vaccination has been mooted to combat falling childhood vaccine uptake rates in England. This study investigated parental preferences for a mandatory vaccination scheme.

Discrete choice experiment. Six attributes were investigated: vaccine, child age group, incentive, penalty, ability to opt out, and compensation scheme. Mixed effects conditional logit regression models were used to investigate parental preferences and relative importance of attributes.

Participants were 1,001 parents of children aged 5 years and under in England (53% female; mean age=33·6 years, SD=7·1; 84% white). Parental preferences were mostly based on incentives (30·7% relative importance; 80·9% [95% confidence interval 76·3-85·0%] preference for parent and 74·8% [71·0-78·3%] for child incentive; reference: no incentive) and penalties (25·4% relative importance; 69·5% [65·7-73·1%] preference for schemes where unvaccinated children cannot attend school or day care and 67·6% [63·6-71·4%] for those withholding financial benefits for parents of unvaccinated children; reference: £450 fine). Parents also preferred schemes that: offered a compensation scheme (18·1% relative importance; 66·4% [62·7-69·8%] preference; reference: not offered), mandated vaccination in children aged 2 years (versus 5 years; 11·4% relative importance; 42·6% [39·4-45·9%] preference; reference: 2 years), mandated the 6-in-1 vaccine (10·5% relative importance; 58·2% [54·6-61·7%] preference; reference: MMR), and that offered only medical exemptions (versus medical and religious belief exemptions; 4·0% relative importance; 45·5% [41·1-50·0%] preference; reference: medical exemptions).

These findings can inform policymakers' decisions about how best to implement a mandatory childhood vaccination scheme in England.

Data collection was funded by a British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grants (SRG1920\101118).