Development and validation of Attitudes Towards Vaccinations Scale (ATVS) - part 1

BackgroundSince infectious diseases can lead to serious consequences among older people, clinicians should be able to motivate older patients effectively to uptake vaccination. However, there are few instruments assisting them in this challenge. This article is the first part of a series of two articles proposing a scale facilitating assessment of perception of advantages and disadvantages of vaccination among older people.MethodsThis article describes the process of development and validation of the Attitudes Towards Vaccination Scale (ATVS). The development and validation phases were performed on two samples of patients aged 60 and older in outpatient geriatric clinic and family doctor's outpatient clinics (n = 103 and n = 85, respectively). The statistical analysis of the material gathered in both phases involved exclusion of the overlapping items, based on analysis of correlation matrix, analysis of theoretical validity, including its factor structure and meaning of subscales, as well as reliability.ResultsThe final version ATVS has a two-dimensional structure: it consists of two 4-item subscales, namely positive attitude (PA) subscale and negative attitude (NA) subscale. The correlation between subscales equalled −0.58. The reliability of PA-subscale equalled 0.83 and NA subscale equalled 0.70. Reliability of total ATVS score equalled 0.84.ConclusionsWe developed and validated a short tool which can be applied in a clinical practice to guide the assessment of older people' attitudes towards vaccination and their education about immunization. The second part of the series of articles provides an in-depth understanding of the theoretical relations of the construct measured by ATVS with psychological concepts.