Predicting Young Adults’ Intentions to Get the H1N1 Vaccine: An Integrated Model

TLDR

Young adults aged 19–24 experienced the highest infection rates during the 2009 H1N1 pandemic. The study aimed to examine how social cognitive factors influence college students’ intentions to receive the H1N1 vaccine by comparing the theory of planned behavior, the health belief model, and an integrated model. Researchers compared the predictive power of the theory of planned behavior, the health belief model, and an integrated model to assess vaccine intentions. College students’ H1N1 vaccine uptake was only about 8%, and the integrated model showed that health belief model variables affected intentions through theory of planned behavior variables, suggesting that adding health‑specific constructs can improve the predictive validity of the theory of planned behavior.

Abstract

Young adults 19 through 24 years of age were among the populations that had the highest frequency of infection from the 2009 H1N1 pandemic. However, over the 2009–2010 flu season, H1N1 vaccine uptake among college students nationwide was around 8%. To explore the social cognitive factors that influenced their intentions to get the H1N1 vaccine, this study compares the predictive power of the theory of planned behavior (TPB), the health belief model (HBM), and an integrated model. The final model shows that several HBM variables influenced behavioral intentions through the TPB variables. The results suggest that even though the TPB seemed a superior model for behavior prediction, the addition of the HBM variables could inform future theory development by offering health-specific constructs that potentially enhance the predictive validity of TPB variables.