The Relationship Between COVID-19 Awareness and Vaccine Hesitancy among University Students

Abstract

Purpose: The following research was conducted in an effort to determine the relationship between Material and Methods: Data was collected from 700 university students between October 2021 and January 2022 through the snowball sampling method for the purposed of this descriptive and cross-sectional study. A specifications form, COVID-19 Awareness Scale and Vaccine Hesitancy Scale in Pandemics were all utilized for the collection of necessary data. Number, mean, percentile distributions, standard deviation, One-Way ANOVA, independent t-test, Pearson correlation analysis were used to evaluate the data. Results: University students achieved 89.24±16.25 points on the COVID-19 awareness scale and 23.32±9.61 points on the Vaccine Hesitancy Scale in Pandemics. The scales mean scores differed according to the descriptive characteristics of the students (p<0.05). A moderately negative correlational relationship was found between the total mean score of the COVID-19 Awareness Scale and the Vaccine Hesitancy Scale in Pandemics total score (r=-0.496, p=0.00). Conclusion: University students' awareness of COVID-19 was very high and hesitations about vaccination were below the average. The results of this study determined that as student awareness of COVID-19 increases, hesitations about vaccination decrease. For this reason, it is necessary to organize educational activities that contain reliable information about COVID-19 for students.

Keywords

• Awareness of COVID-19
• vaccine in pandemic
• university student

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