Peer-reviewed article

Vaccine confidence and information sources among children and adolescents: A national cross-sectional survey.

Bo Terning Hansen, Margrethe Greve-Isdahl · 5 Mar 2026

Abstract

Understanding vaccine confidence among children and adolescents is important for sustaining high immunization coverage and trust in vaccination programmes because young people may participate in decisions about their vaccinations. However, little is known about how young people themselves perceive vaccines and access information. A national web-based survey on vaccination was conducted in March 2025 among 8 to 19-y-olds in Norway (n = 857). Most respondents expressed high confidence in vaccine effectiveness and safety, although confidence was lower for safety than for effectiveness. Confidence in vaccine safety differed by age group and was higher among children (age 8 to 11 y) than adolescents. Confidence in vaccine effectiveness and safety differed by parental education level and was higher among those with higher-educated parents. Parents were the primary vaccine information source (52%), followed by school health nurses (25%) and the internet (15%). With increasing age, the importance of parents decreased, and the importance of school health nurses and the internet increased. Citing parents as the primary information source was associated with higher vaccine confidence. Among adolescents who reported encountering vaccine-related content on social media, 28% had seen messages portraying vaccines as good, 21% as bad, and 39% as both good and bad. Being exposed to social media content portraying vaccines as bad was associated with lower confidence in vaccine effectiveness. These findings suggest that vaccine confidence among children and adolescents is associated with social and informational contexts that may change with age, which is important for informing age-appropriate strategies for vaccine communication.