Testing The Effectiveness Of Two Interventions To Reduce Vaccine Hesitancy Among Adolescents
- Conditions
- Vaccine HesitancyVaccine RefusalHealth Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice
- Interventions
- Behavioral: Kidivax ChatbotBehavioral: Activité Vaccins et Vaccination - LAMAP
- Registration Number
- NCT06155877
- Lead Sponsor
- Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France
- Brief Summary
Vaccines currently prevent several million deaths every year and more lives could be saved if vaccination take up increased. The World Health Organization identifies vaccine hesitancy as one of the ten most important threats to global health and emphasizes the importance of devising interventions to reduce vaccine hesitancy. The two most promising interventions rely on consensus messaging, which has robust but small effects, and interactive discussion, which has larger effects, but is difficult to scale up. School-based interventions aimed at adolescents have the potential to make the best of both types of interventions. Interventions that take place in schools can be conducted over longer periods of time (up to several hours) and are rolled out by a figure that is typically trusted and respected (the teacher). Moreover, intervening during adolescence is particularly timely since important vaccines are delivered at that age (most notably the human papillomavirus vaccine), and because attitudes towards vaccination during adolescence might have a long-lasting impact, as is the case for other health related attitudes.
This study tests the effectiveness of two interventions, a pedagogical intervention based on consensus messaging, and a chatbot intervention designed to mimic interactive discussion, on 9th grade French pupils.
- Detailed Description
Not available
Recruitment & Eligibility
- Status
- COMPLETED
- Sex
- All
- Target Recruitment
- 8590
- French 9th grade students (equivalent to "troisième")'
- One class per school
- Do not understand French
Study & Design
- Study Type
- INTERVENTIONAL
- Study Design
- PARALLEL
- Arm && Interventions
Group Intervention Description Chatbot intervention Kidivax Chatbot Teachers, and then pupils, receive a link to a chatbot. This chatbot is a basic conversational agent that can answer the most common questions about vaccination. The chatbot is entirely scripted, providing users with a limited choice of questions at each stage. These questions are the most commonly raised questions about vaccination in adolescents, based on existing literature, and on focus groups conducted by our team. In this intervention, teachers will be asked to supervise the use of the chatbot in class. Pupils will use the chatbot either individually or in groups depending on the number of computers available. Teachers will be encouraged to conclude the intervention by a class discussion. Teachers will be asked to devote about one hour to this intervention (use of the chatbot and class discussion). The full chatbot text is available on the experiment's OSF repository LAMAP intervention Activité Vaccins et Vaccination - LAMAP Teachers receive two sets of activities, accompanied by a tutorial. Both sets of activities also include evaluation tools that teachers can use to clarify the objectives of the lesson and to assess the pupils' learning progress. The estimated length of each set is 5 hours.The activities and the tutorials were created by pedagogical experts of the Fondation La Main à la pâte, an NGO whose goal is to foster science education. Activities and tutorials are now freely available on the La Main a la pâte website. Teachers were free to choose whether to present the first or the second set of activities, and to choose how many of the activities to conduct. The actual length of the intervention thus varied from one classroom to another, which mimics ecological conditions. Teachers were asked to devote at least one hour to the activities. LAMAP activities are available on the experiment's OSF repository
- Primary Outcome Measures
Name Time Method Attitude towards vaccination Up to 8 months Participants' attitude towards vaccination were measured as the average agreement with 4 questions measured on a 7-points Likert Scale created for this study, ranging from 1 - "Completely disagree" to 7 - "Totally agree", where a higher score corresponds to more positive attitudes towards vaccination.
"The vaccines used in France are effective" "The vaccines used in France are safe" "Vaccines are useful because they protect us from dangerous diseases". "It is important to get vaccinated to protect others". For the full questionnaire, see the experiment's OSF repository.
All outcomes were assessed three times: before teachers received our interventions (November 15th - December 12th), in the middle of the school year (March 6th -June 8th), and after all teachers used our interventions (May 11th - June 23rd).
- Secondary Outcome Measures
Name Time Method Knowledge about vaccination Up to 8 months Knowledge is measured as the average number of correct answers to 11 True or False questions:
"Vaccines are not necessary, since diseases can be treated by drugs (such as antibiotics)" "Without vaccines, smallpox would still exist" "The effectiveness of vaccines has been scientifically proven" "Children would be more resistant if they did not receive so many vaccines" "Vaccination can cause certain disorders, such as autism, multiple sclerosis or diabetes" "If a child receives too many vaccines at once, it can overload their immune system" "The chemicals included in vaccines are not dangerous" "Vaccination increases the risk of developing allergies" "Vaccines are injected too early, which prevents children from building their immune systems" "Vaccines cannot cause the disease they protect against" "Thanks to scientific advances, scientists can create vaccines with fewer side effects"
Like all other outcomes, knowledge was assessed three times during the year.Intention to be vaccinated Up to 8 months Intention to be vaccinated is measured as the average agreement with 5 questions, measured on a 7-points Likert Scale created for this study, ranging from 1 - "Completely disagree" to 7 - "Totally agree", where a higher score corresponds to a stronger intention to be vaccinated.
"If a vaccine for a new disease becomes available, I would get vaccinated" "If an AIDS vaccine became available, I would get vaccinated" "If a common cold vaccine became available, I would get vaccinated" "If a gastroenteritis vaccine became available, I would get vaccinated" "If a vaccine for certain cancers became available, I would get vaccinated" For the full questionnaire, see the experiment's OSF repository
All outcomes were assessed three times: before teachers received our interventions (November 15th - December 12th), in the middle of the school year (March 6th -June 8th), and after all teachers used our interventions (May 11th - June 23rd).
Trial Locations
- Locations (1)
Institut Jean Nicod, Département d'études cognitives, École Normale Supérieure, Université PSL, EHESS, CNRS
🇫🇷Paris, France