Exploring the Students’ Decision-Making Process on Being Vaccinated against COVID-19

Abstract

The government has announced that the country will soon receive its first vaccine doses from Sinovac. Moreover, as of December 2, 2021, with 2,833,038 COVID-19 cases, the coronavirus was still active and has killed at least 48,712 people. With that, developing and distributing vaccines would enable us to reduce the rapidly increasing COVID-19 cases in the Philippines. However, many Filipinos still need to be more hesitant to take the COVID-19 vaccination. This study aims to understand and explore the factors affecting students' decision-making regarding vaccination amid the pandemic. This study used the Qualitative approach and a Phenomenological design. This method enabled the researchers to explore further and analyze the lives and experiences of the selected informants for the needed data.

Furthermore, the sampling procedure chosen for this study is purposive sampling with six selected vaccinated informants. The findings suggest that the hesitancy of vaccines is still a significant problem in this country. It was revealed that family and peers influenced some, while some had self-made decisions. Social media also played a significant role in disseminating vaccination-related information—moreover, most of the selected informants mentioned having Pfizer as a type of vaccine they had. Nonetheless, despite taking the vaccination, no health concerns were mentioned regarding the vaccines. The findings shed light on the possible motivations and reasons that can convince people to be vaccinated.