Parents’ or legal guardians’ beliefs and attitudes about childhood vaccination: a scoping review

Creencias y actitudes de padres o tutores legales sobre la vacunación infantil: revisión del alcance

ABSTRACT

Objective:

to map scientific evidence about perceptions, beliefs, knowledge and attitudes of parents or legal guardians of children under 5 years of age regarding routine childhood vaccination.

Methods:

a scoping review, conducted in accordance with the JBI framework. The searches were carried out in the PubMed/MEDLINE, Web of Science, Scopus and LILACS databases. A total of 5,535 studies were returned and 77 were selected, which met the inclusion criteria.

Results:

perceptions related to interaction with healthcare professionals and services, with family organization and structure, with social interaction and public policies, cultural, religious and personal beliefs, knowledge about vaccination schedule, vaccination and immunization process and sources of information are the main factors mapped and which can positively or negatively influence parents’ or legal guardians’ attitudes towards vaccinating children.

Conclusions:

the findings allow us to identify factors related to parents’ perception and beliefs about childhood vaccination.

Descriptors:
Vaccination; Immunization Programs; Legal Guardians; Parents; Child, Preschool