Analysing the Impacts of Individual Factors on Decision Making and Strengthening Positive Attitudes on Vaccination

Aims and objectives: This paperwork aims to analyse the knowledge and attitudes on immunisation, subjective perceptions of the risks and decision theory of vaccination amongst the specific female population living in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Purpose: The purpose of the research is to point out the significance of parents’ decisions and strengthening of positive attitudes on vaccination. Material and methods: The research was conducted during 2018. Females from different parts of the Federation were asked questions. There were 4000 respondents of different ages ranging from 20 to 50 years old females (approximately 1% of the target population). The respondents were classified according to their place of living (urban/rural), and also being a parent or not. The questionnaire was answered by 2504 respondents being parents with a certain experience with immunisation of their children, but also 1496 future parents who expressed their attitude towards immunisation. For this research, a special questionnaire was used, comprising 18 questions classified into 4 different groups. Results: Most of the respondents (71.2%) who already have children claim they vaccinated their children completely whereas 2.0% respondents from urban areas and 1.3% from rural areas explicitly refuse to vaccinate their children. The rest of the respondents (25.4%) claim they partially vaccinated their children or they are not familiar with the vaccination status of their children. Our research shows that parents are mostly informed about vaccinations and immunisation by some medical workers – paediatricians (36.6%). This research also suggests that respondents are showing a great level of reluctance and scepticism towards some medical workers and that only 40.6% of respondents unconditionally trust their doctor. Additionally, the results show that considering the safety of vaccines there are significant differences amongst urban and rural population. In urban areas, 18.8% of respondents claim that they completely trust vaccines and in rural areas there are 36.2% of respondents trusting them. Conclusion: We may conclude that personal experience, medical system efficiency, trusting medical professionals, vaccine safety and communication in public health community are very important to make decisions on vaccinating children