The association between parental health beliefs and immunization status among children followed by private pediatricians

To determine the association between parental health beliefs and the immunization status of their children, parents of children seen in two private pediatric practices completed a questionnaire on attitudes about immunizations. Five components of health beliefs were surveyed: perceived benefits of immunizations, susceptibility to diseases prevented by immunizations, severity of those diseases, parental feelings of self-efficacy in promoting their child's health, and barriers to immunization. Responses to the health-beliefs statements were transformed to an ordinal scale between 1 and 6, with ''6'' corresponding to strongly positive feelings about immunizations. Immunization data were abstracted from practice medical records, Overall, 162/194 (83.3%) study children were fully immunized. There were no significant differences between parents of fully immunized children and those of under-immunized children in total health-beliefs score or for the benefits, susceptibility, severity, or barriers components. Self-efficacy scores were significantly higher- among parents of fully immunized children (P = 0.019); however, this was largely due to differences in the subgroup of children of mothers with lower education levels. The results of this study suggest that among parents of children followed by private pediatricians, health beliefs do not significantly influence immunization status.