Abstract

While many colleges and universities provide students with information related to COVID-19 from reliable sources, there is still a high risk for misinformation and disinformation to spread through students’ use of online sources and social media. This is concerning as young adults tend to use these mediums more often for purposes of information gathering. Regarding vaccine behavior, constructs of the Health Belief Model have been shown to have significant mediating effects: perceived effectiveness of the vaccine, perceived risk of acquiring a disease, perceived barriers to vaccinations, and cues to actions, have been shown to be essential predictors of influenza vaccination acceptance rate. In this study, students at an urban community college (males and females aged 18 to 65) were invited to participate in an online survey that utilized three constructs of the Health Belief Model—specifically, perceived susceptibility, knowledge, and self-efficacy—to determine whether there is an association between these constructs and COVID-19 vaccine acceptability. Researchers found although COVID-19 knowledge and self-efficacy for preventive behaviors were high, only one-third of the respondents thought the vaccines and boosters were safe and felt comfortable getting vaccinated, lowering the population’s vaccine acceptability rate. Of the vaccinated students, 75 percent were influenced to get vaccinated by their friends and family members.