Essay On Influenza Vaccination

Submitted By Genie-Cooper
Words: 1650
Pages: 7

Abstract:
This report looks at participant’s willingness to receive the influenza vaccination and different factors that may/may not encourage vaccinations. Researchers believed that money priming would make participants less likely to be vaccinated and only vaccination history, anticipation of getting the flu in the next year and the UC vaccination policy would affect willingness to get the vaccination. Participants were gathered from the Psychology106 class and asked to complete a memory recall task (where some groups were primed with money) and then directly after completed a vaccination survey. The results showed that while money did not affect willingness to receive the vaccination their other predictions were correct. From this study it is evident that the above factors (excluding money) can be generalised to the general population.

Influenza Vaccinations and the participant’s willingness to obtain it considering certain factors
Vaccinations are a way of decreasing the likelihood of viruses by stimulating the immune system to defend the body against that particular virus, viruses such as the influenza virus (Flu). During the winter months, when the flu virus is more likely to spread, becoming vaccinated is a very wise primitive strike, especially for those who socialise on a day to day basis in a close proximity to each other, such as workplaces, schools, Universities and shopping centres. Many past research has been completed in order to discover what factors may influence people when it comes time to receive said flu vaccinations, this is important as the more people to get immunised directly reduces the number of people who get sick. Many different researchers have carried out many different experiments in order to discover why people do or do not get vaccinated and what factors the can change to increase the number of people getting vaccinated. Tsutsui, .Y, Benzion, U. and Shahrabani, S. carried out a research experiment in Japan in order to see what factors Japanese people considered whether or not to receive the flu vaccination. After their research they came to the conclusion that the participants made very rational decisions on the flu vaccinations by taking many factors into account such as, the probability that they would get the flu, the severity of the virus (Flu virus in this case) if they had been vaccinated in the past, the possible side effects and the benefits of receiving the vaccination. Also, Tsutsui, Benzion, Shahrabani found that age, gender and the participants marital status played a major contributing factor on their decision to receive the vaccination or not, as did the costs of the vaccination (Tsutsui, Benzion, & Shahrabani, 2012) In similar research, the researchers wanted to investigate the how much the idea of flu vaccinations were accepted by healthy working adults in their workplace situation. Two different investigations took place, one interviewing 79 university employees while 435 corporate employees filled out a questionnaire relating to vaccinations. The researchers discovered that the university employees considered three factors when it came to vaccinations, how effective they thought the vaccine would be, the side effects that they might encounter and their own previous vaccination history. The results were the same from the corporate employee’s questionnaire however the age of the employees seemed to be a significant factor (the older they were the more likely they were to get vaccinated) and also the percentage of their co-workers to get vaccinated also increased the likelihood of themselves receiving the vaccinations. Chapman and Coups discovered that the findings of their research was relevant to previous studies relating to high-risk populations (and health care workers) and that the factors (effectiveness of the vaccine, side effects and previous vaccination history) can all be somewhat generalized to all healthy adults. One