The role of trust in the health-care system in the relationship between trust in official modern medicine and youths’ attitudes towards vaccination against COVID-19

Janić, Ognjen and Ljevaja, Milica and Lazić, Milica (2022) The role of trust in the health-care system in the relationship between trust in official modern medicine and youths’ attitudes towards vaccination against COVID-19. In: XVIII Dani primenjene psihologije. Faculty of Philosophy, Niš, pp. 91-92. ISBN 978-86-7379-605-5

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Abstract

The aim of this study was to test the moderating effect that trust in the health-care system has in the relationship between trust in official modern medicine and youths’ attitudes towards vaccination against COVID-19. The online research was conducted on Serbian sample consisting of 311 (70.7% female) participants with an age range from 15 to 25 (M = 21.19, SD = 2.546). Both the predicting and the moderating variable were measured on a single-item scale, with a ten-point answer scale, in which par- ticipants answered how much they trust the official medicine and the health-care system, respectively. Five-item scale (α = .963) was used to measure youths’ attitudes towards COVID-19 vaccination. Therefore, the participants evaluated vaccination against COVID-19 on the semantic differential scale from 1 to 7 (harmful-useful; unnecessary-necessary; bad-good; unpleas- ant-pleasant; stressful-relaxing). Hierarchical regression analysis shows that the model is statistically significant (R2 = .350, F(3, 307) = 55.010, p < .01) in the second block when interactive ef- fect of trust in official medicine and trust in the health-care system was introduced (β = .121, p < .05). The results suggest that with the increase of trust in official medicine the more positive are youths’ attitudes toward vaccination (β = .493, p < .01), yet in people with higher levels of trust in the health-care system this relationship was stronger. In other words, in the conditions of low trust in official medicine the youths’ attitudes are steadily negative, no matter the level of trust in the health-care system. Meanwhile, in the conditions of high levels of trust in official medicine the ones who have also higher levels of trust in the health- care system have significantly more positive attitudes than those with lower levels of trust in the health-care system. The theoretical and practical implications of these results will be discussed.

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