Conditional Effect of Need for Affect and Perceived Prior Knowledge in Processing HPV Messages

Area of Science:

• Health Communication
• Psychology
• Vaccine Hesitancy Research

Background:

• Understanding factors influencing parental vaccine decisions is crucial for public health.
• Need for Affect (NFA) and perceived prior knowledge are potential moderators in health message processing.
• Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine uptake remains a public health concern.

Purpose of the Study:

• To examine how Need for Affect (NFA) and perceived prior HPV vaccine knowledge influence parents' processing of vaccine messages.
• To investigate the moderating role of message format (narrative vs. non-narrative) on these relationships.
• To assess the impact on vaccine transportation, intentions, and information-seeking behaviors.

Main Methods:

• Experimental design with 479 US parents of unvaccinated children.
• Three message conditions: narrative, non-narrative, and no message.
• Statistical analysis of correlations and interaction effects.

Main Results:

• Perceived prior knowledge and NFA positively correlated with vaccine transportation, intentions, and information-seeking.
• NFA's influence on these outcomes was stronger in the narrative message condition.
• For parents with low prior knowledge, NFA significantly predicted transportation and intentions within the narrative condition.

Conclusions:

• Message framing and individual differences like NFA and prior knowledge are key in HPV vaccine communication.
• Narrative interventions may be particularly effective for engaging parents with lower prior knowledge and higher NFA.
• Findings offer practical insights for designing targeted public health campaigns to improve HPV vaccine uptake.