Background and Purpose: Knowledge, attitude, practices, and concerns (KAPC) are important components for the COVID-19 vaccine. Identifying the typology of KAPC can provide health care professionals insight into ways to encourage vaccination uptake among the student population. The study pursues two specific objectives: Classification of Mazandaran University of Medical Sciences students based on KAPC about the COVID-19 vaccine, determining the relationship between these patterns, and performing COVID-19 vaccine injection.
Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional study design was used to collect the data about the students’ COVID-19 vaccination and their perception of KAPC toward the COVID-19 vaccine. The analysis of data was conducted in two steps. First, we conducted a latent profile analysis (LPA) to identify subgroups of the COVID-19 vaccine KAPC patterns. Second, the associations between the typology of KAPC and vaccine injection were assessed by logistic regression analysis. Also, the scores of KAPC were compared using an analysis of variance and Bonferroni post hoc tests.
Results: The current study showed three profiles (patterns) of the COVID-19 vaccine KAPC. These patterns included “moderate to high for KAPC” (profile 1: 70.5%), “high knowledge, attitude, practices, and low concerns” (profile 2: 25.4%), “moderate knowledge and low attitude, practices, and high concerns” (profile 3: 4.1%). Students in the three profiles differed significantly in their KAPC factors. The individuals with membership in profile 2 and profile 3 relative to profile 1 have 73% and 99% less odds of injecting the vaccine, respectively.
Conclusion: The patterns of KAPC have various distributions in vaccine injection. It seems that governmental authorities should take measures to improve the knowledge, attitude, and practice of the people appropriate to each profile and identify any obstacles to their promotion.