Panelists discuss report on SU students’ vaccine confidence, hesitations

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A study on Syracuse University students’ vaccine confidence found that, while a majority of students surveyed are open to getting the vaccine, some students are still hesitant.

The “Get Shot Done: Vaccine Confidence Among Syracuse Students” study was conducted from January to April 2021 by student-run public relations firm Hill Communications and student-run advertising firm TNH, who partnered with global health innovation company Real Chemistry.

The study was broken up into three parts: focus groups, an analysis on social media conversation and a digital survey, according to the report.

Community leaders in a virtual panel Wednesday discussed the research report, which found that 95% of SU students would get vaccinated if it meant they could return to a regular college experience.

Survey Findings

The digital survey, which surveyed 472 students, found that 86% of respondents are open to getting the COVID-19 vaccine, 10.7% may be open to getting the vaccine, and 3.1% are not open to getting the vaccine.

Of the respondents, 87.9% identified themselves as white, 5.2% as Asian, 3.2% as Black, 0.39% as American Indian or Alaska Native, 0.37% as Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander and 2.9% as other.

Of those who said they may or may not be open to taking the vaccine, 61% cited being nervous about short- and long-term side effects of the vaccine. Additionally, 7.6% of those who are not open to taking the vaccine said they are hesitant due to the fast rate that the vaccine was approved, the report said.

“Some of the side effects make me nervous, especially with how exhausted and run down some people have felt afterwards and having to balance it with school work, but it’s not enough to turn me away from getting it,” one student wrote in the survey.

Communicating that the vaccine is safe and effective will allow us to bring back normalcy, Onondaga County Commissioner of Health Indu Gupta said at the panel. Having trusted messengers, from local leaders to students, will help boost confidence in the information.

“Participating students are the very key at this point to talk to their peers, their friends and families within their school as well as outside their school and be role models and continue to motivate them,” Gupta said.

Out of the respondents who said they are not open to taking the vaccine, 60% said their hesitancy is at least partially due to not knowing what is in the vaccine, while 60% of those who do not want to be vaccinated said it is because they do not believe they are at risk of “serious illness” from COVID-19.

75.2% of respondents who are or may be willing to get the vaccine selected family as one reason to be vaccinated in the digital survey response. 82% of students mentioned a return to “normalcy” in the open-ended response section on the reasoning to get vaccinated.

Allen Griffin, assistant coach of the SU men’s basketball team, said he knows many people in Syracuse’s Black community may be hesitant to get the COVID-19 vaccine.

Griffin was previously reluctant to get the vaccine, going as far as to say he would never receive it. After having a conversation with someone in the medical field, he felt more comfortable getting the vaccine.

“I just want to help others who are in my boat kind of come around and get vaccinated,” Griffin said. “Because, again, I want to get back to as normal as possible. I want the Carrier Dome to have 90,000 people in there next year.”

Social Media Findings

The report also focused on vaccination information spread on social media. This part of the study specifically focused on 285 tweets which were tweeted over a 24-hour time span directly after SU announced that students are required to get the vaccine in order to return to campus for the summer and fall semesters. 59.5% of these tweets had a neutral stance, 27% had a positive stance and 13.5% had a negative stance, according to the report.

Griffin said during the panel that students can read into a lot of false information.

Hill Communications and TNH are contributing to the student-run effort with their campaign “Get Shot Done.” The campaign’s instagram account ― @getshotdonesu ― uses infographics, memes and pandemic-related updates to communicate to students.

Businesses also have an important role in increasing vaccine confidence, said Annika Engineer, practice leader for Corporate Strategy & Crisis Management at Real Chemistry. As information changes everyday, helpful data can provide insights to build trust in vaccines, she said.

To communicate to the public effectively, messages need to utilize trusted sources along with personal, simplified and discoverable pieces of media, Engineer said. It is important to emphasize support for vaccines through data instead of focusing on naysayers to make it a social norm, she added.

Maya Gooseman | Digital Design Director

Social media is the biggest way that misinformation about the vaccine spreads because of the high amount of memes and personal anecdotes on different social media platforms “generating vaccine skepticism” in college students, the report said.

Skepticism and hesitancy of the COVID-19 vaccine stems from “a lack of understanding of what is in it, what the approval process looked like, and what the short and long term implications of getting it may be,” the report said. This uncertainty can be dispelled through explaining information on these topics that people are uninformed on, the report said.

Political affiliation also impacts students’ opinions of the vaccine, the report said. The report referenced an NPR survey, which looked at the connection between political affiliation and willingness to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. The results of the poll indicated “sharp partisan differences” between those surveyed who said they did plan on getting the vaccine and those who said they did not plan on getting the vaccine.

Among Republican men, 49% said they did not plan to get the shot, compared with just 6% of Democratic men who said the same. Among 2020 Trump supporters, 47% said they did not plan to get a vaccine compared with just 10% of Biden supporters. https://t.co/FphZTNvFkm

— Versha Sharma (@versharma) March 15, 2021

Starting with empathy is important to understand feelings of skepticism, so communication efforts can address them and provide information, Engineer said.

Shaming people who don’t want to get vaccinated creates unproductive barriers, Engineer said. Instead, she recommends providing information and facts to make people more confident in making informed decisions for their health.

“We can rebuild. We can rebound,” Engineer said. “But not without vaccines and not without a trust in science and medicine and the institutional pillars of society.”

Focus Group Findings

The study also conducted two focus groups to more thoroughly analyze student perceptions of the vaccine, the report said.

“Listen, if you want to go back to going to bars all the time, if you want to go back to frat parties, if you want to go back to blacking out and hooking up with strangers, just get the vaccine,” another student in a focus group said. “We all miss it…. so get your [f***ing] vaccine.”