Predictors of influenza vaccine acceptance among healthy adults

Background. previous studies investigating predictors of influenza vaccine acceptance have focused on high-risk patients or health care workers. Few s tudies have examined flu shot acceptance among healthy adults in workplace settings, even though influenza vaccine is recommended for this group as we ll. Methods. Two studies investigated predictors of flu vaccine acceptance in w orkplace samples of healthy adults. In the first study, 79 university emplo yees were interviewed, while in the second, 435 corporate employees complet ed a questionnaire. Results. In the first study, flu shot acceptance was predicted by perceived effectiveness of the vaccine (r = 0.36), perceived likelihood of vaccine s ide effects (r = -0.32), and having received the shot in the previous year (r = 0.25). In the second study, flu shot acceptance was again predicted by perceived effectiveness (r = 0.49), likelihood of side effects (r = -0.31) , and previous flu shot (r = 0.66) and was also related to older age (r = 0 .10) and to predicted percentage of co-workers who also received the shot ( r = 0.24). Conclusions. The current studies indicate that predictors of vaccine accept ance among healthy adults are similar to those identified in studies of hig h-risk patient populations and health care workers, (C) 1999 American Healt h Foundation and Academic Press.