Personal Values and Vaccination against Covid Preregistration Analysis
Author(s) / Creator(s)
Zehetleitner, Michael
Hellmann, Sebastian
Rausch, Manuel
Other kind(s) of contributor
Leibniz Institut of Psychology
Catholic University of Eichstätt
Abstract / Description
A1 Background
Vaccine hesitancy, the decision to reject or delay accepting vaccines despite the availability of vaccine services (MacDonald, 2015), is an urgent problem in combating the Covid-19 pandemic because in countries with sufficiently available doses, vaccine uptake is slowing. Coming closer to herd immunity (Anderson & May, 1985) will be a prerequisite of reducing non-pharmaceutical interventions such as social distancing, school closures, or mask wearing.
The moral dimensions of liberty, purity, authority, and possibly harm have been found to correlate with vaccination hesitancy measured as parents’ and caregivers’ attitudes and intentions towards vaccina-tion against child’s diseases (Amin et al., 2017; Rossen et al., 2019).
Further predictors of vaccine hesitancy have been demonstrated to be vaccine attitudes, political atti-tudes, conspiracy beliefs, faith in science, and cognitive thinking style. All these predictors are known to be interrelated and have never been investigated together in a single study.
A2 Objectives and Research questions
The present study aims at investigating the relationship between moral values with psychological pre-cursors to adults’ decisions to be vaccinated against Covid-19, a decision directly concerning the de-ciders themselves.
First, from the perspective of applied research, vaccination programs need to be informed about psy-chological factors beyond beliefs in safety and efficacy of vaccines in order to tailor messaging di-rected especially at vaccine hesitant subpopulations. The objective of the present study is to identify subpopulations in vaccine hesitant persons and their moral signatures. The moral signatures of vac-cine programs have been demonstrated to have an effect on vaccine uptake (Heine & Wolters, 2021).
Second, from the perspective of basic research, the present study investigates the relationship be-tween vaccine beliefs, vaccination decisions, and moral values. The current pandemic situation allows to differentiate vaccine attitudes and mere intentions from the factual decision to become vaccinated or not. This allows to answer the research question: Do moral values predict the decision to vaccinate against Covid-19 over and above vaccination beliefs and attitudes? Third, the study aims at a direct replication of a previously unpublished finding of the relationship between moral foundations and the decision to vaccinate against Covid-19.
A3 Participants
A sample of German adults is aimed to be drawn with 50% participants already vaccinated against Covid-19 at least once and 50% who do not intend to be vaccinated.
A4 Study method
Participants are asked to complete an online survey using the moral foundations questionnaire (J. Graham et al., 2011), psychological antecedents of vaccination in general and against Covid-19 spe-cifically („5C model“ Betsch et al., 2020), conspiracy mentality (Stojanov & Halberstadt, 2019), faith in science (Farias et al., 2013), propensity to think rationally (Thomson & Oppenheimer, 2016), open-minded thinking style about evidence , and political attitudes (Akkerman et al., 2014; Decker et al., 2013).
First, data-driven clustering methods will be used to model groups of vaccination hesitancy and their relationship to the endorsement of moral domains.
A5 Open Science
The analysis is pre-registered in this file. Study materials are available in the second file of this pre-registration. Data and executable analysis code will be made publicly available.
Persistent Identifier
PsychArchives acquisition timestamp
2022-04-27 12:50:23 UTC
Publisher
PsychArchives
Citation
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Personal Values and Vaccination against Covid Preregistration Analysis.pdfAdobe PDF - 961.33KBMD5: 6ddd6dc8a7be7e47338746a55cb49a80Description: Preregistration of AnalysisRationale for choice of sharing level: There are no plausible reasons (such as the inclusion of personal data of human subjects data or research ethics) for restricting access and use from the perspective of the scientific community. The sharing level should foster reuse and widespread dissemination of the files. The contributors wish to learn how others use their content, if they voluntarily choose to disclose information about their intended use of the content.
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There are no other versions of this object.
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Author(s) / Creator(s)Zehetleitner, Michael
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Author(s) / Creator(s)Hellmann, Sebastian
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Author(s) / Creator(s)Rausch, Manuel
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Other kind(s) of contributorLeibniz Institut of Psychologyen
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Other kind(s) of contributorCatholic University of Eichstätten
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PsychArchives acquisition timestamp2022-04-27T12:50:23Z
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Made available on2022-04-27T12:50:23Z
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Date of first publication2022-04-27
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Abstract / DescriptionA1 Background Vaccine hesitancy, the decision to reject or delay accepting vaccines despite the availability of vaccine services (MacDonald, 2015), is an urgent problem in combating the Covid-19 pandemic because in countries with sufficiently available doses, vaccine uptake is slowing. Coming closer to herd immunity (Anderson & May, 1985) will be a prerequisite of reducing non-pharmaceutical interventions such as social distancing, school closures, or mask wearing. The moral dimensions of liberty, purity, authority, and possibly harm have been found to correlate with vaccination hesitancy measured as parents’ and caregivers’ attitudes and intentions towards vaccina-tion against child’s diseases (Amin et al., 2017; Rossen et al., 2019). Further predictors of vaccine hesitancy have been demonstrated to be vaccine attitudes, political atti-tudes, conspiracy beliefs, faith in science, and cognitive thinking style. All these predictors are known to be interrelated and have never been investigated together in a single study. A2 Objectives and Research questions The present study aims at investigating the relationship between moral values with psychological pre-cursors to adults’ decisions to be vaccinated against Covid-19, a decision directly concerning the de-ciders themselves. First, from the perspective of applied research, vaccination programs need to be informed about psy-chological factors beyond beliefs in safety and efficacy of vaccines in order to tailor messaging di-rected especially at vaccine hesitant subpopulations. The objective of the present study is to identify subpopulations in vaccine hesitant persons and their moral signatures. The moral signatures of vac-cine programs have been demonstrated to have an effect on vaccine uptake (Heine & Wolters, 2021). Second, from the perspective of basic research, the present study investigates the relationship be-tween vaccine beliefs, vaccination decisions, and moral values. The current pandemic situation allows to differentiate vaccine attitudes and mere intentions from the factual decision to become vaccinated or not. This allows to answer the research question: Do moral values predict the decision to vaccinate against Covid-19 over and above vaccination beliefs and attitudes? Third, the study aims at a direct replication of a previously unpublished finding of the relationship between moral foundations and the decision to vaccinate against Covid-19. A3 Participants A sample of German adults is aimed to be drawn with 50% participants already vaccinated against Covid-19 at least once and 50% who do not intend to be vaccinated. A4 Study method Participants are asked to complete an online survey using the moral foundations questionnaire (J. Graham et al., 2011), psychological antecedents of vaccination in general and against Covid-19 spe-cifically („5C model“ Betsch et al., 2020), conspiracy mentality (Stojanov & Halberstadt, 2019), faith in science (Farias et al., 2013), propensity to think rationally (Thomson & Oppenheimer, 2016), open-minded thinking style about evidence , and political attitudes (Akkerman et al., 2014; Decker et al., 2013). First, data-driven clustering methods will be used to model groups of vaccination hesitancy and their relationship to the endorsement of moral domains. A5 Open Science The analysis is pre-registered in this file. Study materials are available in the second file of this pre-registration. Data and executable analysis code will be made publicly available.en
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Publication statusotheren
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Review statuspeerRevieweden
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SponsorshipSupport for this research was granted by the ZPID Lab Track and the Catholic University of Eichstätt ProFor+ programme.en
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Persistent Identifierhttps://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12034/5890
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Persistent Identifierhttps://doi.org/10.23668/psycharchives.6510
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Language of contenteng
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PublisherPsychArchivesen
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Is related tohttps://www.psycharchives.org/handle/20.500.12034/5891
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Is related tohttps://doi.org/10.23668/psycharchives.4990
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Is related tohttps://doi.org/10.23668/psycharchives.12347
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Dewey Decimal Classification number(s)150
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TitlePersonal Values and Vaccination against Covid Preregistration Analysisen
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DRO typepreregistrationen
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Visible tag(s)PsychLaben
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Visible tag(s)PRP-QUANT