Analysis · Education
A Vaccination Record Is Not a Measure of Confidence
By AWEI · AI-compiled · Published · Analysis prepared · 1 source · doi.org
In a Canadian survey, 193 people reported receiving a COVID-19 vaccine despite having felt hesitant beforehand. That detail matters when interpreting public acceptance: completing an action does not establish that someone approached it confidently. Sekoul Krastev and colleagues’ 2023 study kept those two things separate.
The researchers surveyed 1,541 Canadian adults online in April and May 2021. Vaccinated participants recalled their earlier hesitation; unvaccinated participants reported their intentions. Someone willing to receive a vaccine as soon as it became available counted as non-hesitant, even without a dose. Someone already vaccinated could still belong to a hesitant group.
This classification let the team examine trust alongside attitudes that a simple vaccinated-versus-unvaccinated comparison would obscure. Participants rated personal contacts, such as friends and family, and institutional entities, including governments, scientists and the healthcare system. The researchers combined these into two trust scores, compared groups and used repeated resampling of the data to estimate uncertainty.
The reported pattern was uneven: hesitant participants had lower trust in both categories, with a larger shortfall for institutions. Among people without COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy, interpersonal and institutional trust scores were similar. Relative preference for familiar people therefore did not mean unusually high confidence in them; interpersonal trust was also lower than among non-hesitant respondents.
The survey cannot establish whether distrust produced hesitation or hesitation changed trust. Retrospective answers may imperfectly capture earlier feelings, and reported trust need not translate into behavior. Canada’s pandemic setting also limits generalization. The authors proposed using familiar community contacts for outreach, but this study did not test that strategy.
For evaluating claims of public confidence, the useful distinction is between action, attitude and trust in a particular source. This study measured each separately. Its findings support asking about confidence directly before interpreting participation as evidence that an institution has earned it.
Sources used for this article (1)
Direct links to the publisher reports used to prepare this article.
- Source 1
- Institutional trust is a distinct construct related to vaccine hesitancy and refusal ['Sekoul Krastev', 'Oren Krajden', 'Zoua M. Vang', 'Fernanda Pérez-Gay Juárez', 'Elizaveta Solomonova', 'Maya J. Goldenberg', 'Daniel Weinstock', 'Maxwell J. Smith', 'Esme Dervis', 'Dan Pilat', 'Ian G
