Why do people decide to get vaccinated or not?

Methods

Summary

This project will utilize reliable and valid self-report measurements to understand participants' opinions about the Covid-19 vaccine. Based on previous literature, it will also try to explain and predict behavior according to their opinion. For example, cognitive biases will be defined as suggested by Saleska and Choi (2021); furthermore, negative bias, as a case in point, will be assessed using the protocol described by Soroka and colleagues (2017). Other aspects of human behavior will be measured, such as political inclination, and factors influencing behavior like socioeconomic background.

Challenges

Participation in the experiment is one of the greatest challenges. In general, people are reluctant to share their opinion and demographic information in self-report measurements. In Maryville, Missouri (location of the study), most of the population is older adults or college students. Some ways to foster participation are monetary (e.g., cash) or academic incentives (credit in class). 

Participants' bias is another challenge we foresee. Subjects may not express their true opinions because they fear being judged or want to portray themselves in some way to the researchers. One of the best ways to overcome this challenge is to keep measurements anonymous because that is correlated with higher levels of disclosure (Murdoch et al., 2014).

Pre Analysis Plan

Because this project is based on correlational research, we intend to compare vaccination rates with variables such as political inclination, socioeconomic background, and cognitive biases. Statistical software (e.g., SPSS, R, and Python) will be utilized to compare results and possibly determine correlations.