Aidan 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.
“I strongly recommend getting into research if you have any aspirations at all of one day being any sort of scientist or going into academia at all.
[Attending and presenting at a conference] really emphasizes the whole reason I came to this school, which is individual attention and basically any opportunity that you want, there’s something you can do for it.
We’re conducting real research as undergrads, which doesn’t happen at every school and I feel lucky to be a part of that. Also, the experience of going to a conference is a huge bonding experience. I feel closer to the members of the lab and we got that opportunity to not only work together but also make memories.”
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/.