Abstract
Background: Human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination coverage in the Netherlands is low (~60%) compared to other childhood vaccinations (>90%), and even lower among ethnic minorities. The aim of this study was to explore the possible impact of ethnicity on the determinants of both HPV vaccination intention and HPV vaccination uptake among parents/guardians having a daughter that is invited for the HPV vaccination.
Methods: In February 2014, parents/guardians living in Amsterdam were invited to complete a questionnaire about social-psychological determinants of their decision making process regarding the HPV vaccination of their daughter and socio-demographic characteristics. This questionnaire was sent approximately one month before the daughter was scheduled to receive her first HPV vaccine dose. Their daughters’ HPV vaccination status was retrieved from the national vaccination database. We distinguished four ethnic groups: Dutch (NL), Surinamese, Netherlands Antillean, and Aruban (SNA), Middle-Eastern and North-African (MENA), and Other. To assess the impact of determinants on both intention and uptake, linear and logistic regression analyses were used respectively. Missing data were imputed using multiple imputation by chained equation.
Results: In total 1,309 parents/guardians participated (33% participation rate). In all groups we found the mothers’ intention to be the strongest predictor of their daughters’ HPV vaccination uptake. Explained variance of uptake was highest in the NL-group (pseudo-R2:0.56) and lower in the other ethnic groups (pseudo-R2 varied between 0.23 and 0.29). The lower explained variance can be attributed to the relative large proportion of participants with a positive intention that finally did not go for vaccination in the SNA-group (11%) and MENA-group (30%). Explained variance (R2) of intention varied between 0.66 and 0.77 across ethnic groups, and was best explained by the proximal social-psychological determinants. The strength of association of these determinants with both intention and uptake were largely similar across ethnic groups. (Continued on next page) * Correspondence: nalberts@ggd.amsterdam.nl 1Department of Infectious Diseases, Research and Prevention, Public Health Service (GGD) of Amsterdam, Nieuwe Achtergracht 100, 1018, WT, Amsterdam, The Netherlands 2Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases, Center for Infection and Immunity Amsterdam (CINIMA), Academic Medical Center (AMC), Amsterdam, The Netherlands Full list of author information is available at the end of the article 2017 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if ch