Researching childhood vaccine hesitancy in the wake of COVID-19
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has had a seismic effect on public healthcare, vaccine production, and on society. However, the pandemic has also had a methodological impact on social researchers, including those seeking to better understand vaccine hesitancy in relation to childhood vaccines. In this short communication, we describe the challenging experience of recruiting and conducting qualitative interviews with UK healthcare professionals and vaccine hesitant parents in early 2022. We also explore the way in which the context of COVID influenced our data analysis. Finally, we make recommendations for how researchers, including those using qualitative or quantitative methods, might learn from our experiences, as the complex and delicate relationship between society and vaccines continues to evolve in the wake of the pandemic.
Study specs
- Institution
- University of Birmingham,University of Nottingham
- Discipline
- Sociology of Health,Public Health
- Year
- 2024
- Human Data Platform
- Prolific
- Source
- View Source Google Scholar
Peer Review & Critical Discussion
Potential Selection Bias in 2023 Cohort
The participant pool shows a concerning overrepresentation of users from high-income demographics. Looking at Table 3, we can see that 78% of respondents had annual incomes above $75k, which significantly limits the generalizability of these findings to broader populations.
Non-naive Participants Issue
I've noticed a methodological concern regarding participant naivety. Given that Prolific users often complete multiple studies, there's a real risk that participants had prior exposure to similar experimental paradigms, which could confound the results.
RLHF Applicability to This Study Design
The implications for RLHF training pipelines are understated. If we accept the authors' conclusions about preference stability, this has direct consequences for how we should structure reward model training. The temporal decay effect described in Section 4.2 is particularly relevant.
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