What do Users Consider “Trustworthy” Vaccine Information?

Vaccine misinformation is a worldwide concern, but little is known about its spread and adoption. How do people seek vaccine-related information and decide whether to trust it? This is very much an open question.

Using questions and answers retrieved from “Yahoo! Answers,” we explored how individuals seek vaccine-related information online and evaluate its trustworthiness in a series of studies.

What factors are associated with the perceived trustworthiness of online content about vaccines?

We conducted an online experiment to find out if the stance of the answer and the identity of the answerer affects the perceived trustworthiness of the answer in online Q&A plaforms.

Participants were shown authentic answers that:

(1) were either pro- or anti-vaccination; and

(2) were written by self-identified health professionals, by self-identified parents, or by answerers who did not identify as either.

Participants were then asked to rate the trustworthiness of the answerers, fill out an attention check, and indicate their agreement with four statements pertaining to vaccine confidence (e.g., "Overall I think vaccines are safe").

We then followed up with a moderation process analysis of the trustworthiness ratings:

On average, the answerer's self-identification is associated with the trustworthiness ratings. However, that relationship is moderated by the answer's stance towards vaccination: It is stronger among answers that encourage vaccination than among answers that discourage it.

It seems that at least in this context, on average, experts are considered more trustworthy than parents. Self-identifying as an expert has a small effect (compared to the answer's stance) but it still measurable, even among vaccine-hesitant raters.

Internet users consider primarily "what is said" and (to a lesser extent) "who said it" when assessing online vaccine information.

Vaccine-hesitant internet users’ considerations are more complex, and more research is needed to tailor online communication with this audience.

Figure 1. Epistemic trustworthiness ratings by answer's stance towards vaccination and answerer self-identification.

(a) Descriptive statistics of trustworthiness ratings for all raters, for vaccine-hesitant raters, and for vaccine-confident raters. Ratings are based on the mean of 14 questionnaire items on a 7-point Likert scale. Error bars denote the standard error of the mean.

(b) Moderation analyses predicting epistemic trustworthiness ratings. These analyses examine whether different variables predict trustworthiness ratings, and if so, to what extent, and whether the relationship between answerer self-identification and trustworthiness depends on the answer's stance towards vaccines. One moderation analysis was performed for all raters, and one analysis each for vaccine-hesitant raters and vaccine-confident raters. Each independent variable was attributed a standardized regression coefficient (beta coefficient), which describes the extent to which changes in that variable are related to changes in trustworthiness ratings, when holding all other variables constant, where changes in variables are measured in standard deviations.

One, two and three bullets (•, ••, •••) denote significance at the 0.05, 0.01 and 0.001 levels, respectively.

New Technion study identifies factors used when trusting vaccine info - Jerusalem Post, 16.3.2020

איך מעבירים מדע ברשת? - מכון דוידסון, 22.3.2020

חיסונים: האם אתם מאמינים למה שכתוב ברשת? - ynet, 15.3.2020

Sharon, A. J., Yom-Tov, E., & Baram-Tsabari, A. (2020). Vaccine information seeking on social Q&A services. Vaccine, 38(12), 2691–2699. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.vaccine.2020.02.010