Social Representations of Vaccination in the Frame of Biographical & Family Narratives – Insights for Health Interventions

People in the high-risk groups taking voluntary vaccinations remain at a low percentage, which points to the need for more profound reflections on the socio-cultural background of vaccination-related experiences. Existing studies focus mainly on anti-vaccine attitudes among parents or current or future medical personnel approach. Analyses including biographical experiences, intergenerational impact, or concerning the family as the lay referral system are underrepresented

The paper presents social representations of vaccination - the system of values, ideas, metaphors, beliefs, and practices linked to this phenomenon – recreated on the basis of biographical narratives from older persons who made different decisions regarding voluntary influenza vaccination. An essential element is to indicate social representations’ common core, peripheral elements, and internal contradictions. An additional objective is to explore the relationship between vaccination perception and the biographical health experiences or family patterns influencing older participants’ health practices.

The study involves a mixed method approach: survey questionnaire and biographical narrative interviews with older people who have received influenza vaccination in the three years before the research and with those who did not. To recreate the social representations for groups of different attitudes towards vaccination we use 1) free association method on the open-ended answer regarding associations with the words: “vaccinations”, “influenza” and “health”; 2) content analysis on biographical interview transcripts; 3) scores on the scales for measuring attitudes towards vaccination and 4) survey data regarding vaccination experiences.

It seems particularly valuable that the use of a combination of the elements mentioned above provides insights for health interventions. In order to maximize the potential efficacy of interventions, it is necessary to understand behaviour and behaviour change This research goes further and tries to include an understanding of what can underlie health-related behaviours – the social perception of the phenomena to which those behaviours are linked.