Rebecca is a team member of the Behavioral Health and Social Psychology (BHS) Lab, advised by Psychology Professors Jerusha Detweiler-Bedell and Brian Detweiler-Bedell, this collaborative research team presented their findings on “COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy And Intentions Among Liberal Arts College Students” at the 2022 Society for Personality and Social Psychology conference in San Francisco, CA.
“Attending and presenting at SPSP gave me a sense of the extent to which social psychology has been concerned with current events in the past two years–and how incredibly relevant it can be for assessing and interpreting so many different facets of the COVID-19 pandemic.
It gave me a sense that, even as undergraduates, we have the opportunity to contribute to this body of timely and important research on COVID-19 topics.
I think that one of the most surprising parts of participating in this research has been seeing just how similar the Lewis & Clark data on vaccine hesitancy is to the national data, in terms of differences between groups and main reasons for not getting the vaccine.”
Key Research findings: In their research, the BHS lab team compared their survey results on COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and intentions among liberal arts college students to those of the Kaiser Family Foundation’s nationwide survey. They found similar trends in vaccine intentions among Lewis & Clark College students and people in the United States. While Lewis & Clark students had a lower vaccine hesitancy rate than the nation overall, students of color were more hesitant than white students, a trend also reflected in the nationwide findings between Black and white respondents. Additionally, politically conservative LC students and national respondents were both more hesitant than liberals. The top three barriers to vaccination at LC also aligned with national findings, being fear of side effects, lack of trust in the government, and concerns about the newness of the vaccine. Read more about the BHS lab at: https://college.lclark.edu/labs/behavioral_health_and_social_psychology/.