Validity of the Spanish Version of the Vaccination Attitudes Examination Scale

Abstract

Individuals vary in the extent to which they have unfavorable attitudes towards vaccines. The Vaccination Attitudes Examination (VAX) Scale is a recently developed brief 12-item questionnaire created to better understand general vaccination attitudes. The current research aimed at providing a Spanish adaptation of the VAX Scale. After conducting an initial pilot study, Exploratory and Confirmatory Factor Analysis showed that the Spanish version of the scale had good internal consistency and factor structure (Study 1), discriminant validity from other individual differences measures (such as the Beliefs about Medicine Questionnaire and the Medical Mistrust Index) as well as good predictive validity of relevant vaccination-related outcomes (Study 2). In conclusion, in the present research, the Spanish version of the VAX scale proved to have a high internal consistency, showed convergent validity with other conceptually similar constructs, and successfully predicted vaccination intentions and vaccination decisions. Having this scale available in Spanish will allow researchers to analyze vaccination processes and vaccine hesitancy over a great number of people.

Keywords

• vaccinations
• scale
• individual differences
• vaccine hesitancy
• validity