Resources

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected mental and physical well-being, social cohesion, economic stability as well as individual and community resilience and trust. Vaccination is key to bringing an end to the pandemic, but in this complex setting, it is necessary to understand how, why and the context in which individuals and communities are responding to vaccination efforts. To ensure high vaccination uptake among different target groups such as health workers and vulnerable patient groups, the selection and design of tailored interventions should be informed by behavioral insights into the barriers to, and drivers of, vaccination for these groups.

Qualitative research provides an understanding of a target group’s points of view, what they know and don’t know, and their concerns and experiences. The data collection is through semi-structured discussions which encourage participants to provide perspectives and explanations of their behaviours and intentions. The advantage to this approach is that researchers can pursue insights in greater depth during the data collection whereas a quantitative survey is limited to gathering information through pre-determined criteria. By using a rapid analysis of the data, these insights can then inform tailored interventions for target groups in a timely manner. 

The objectives of this tool are to provide step by step guidance on how to design and conduct rapid qualitative research with different target groups to understand their barriers and drivers to COVID-19 vaccination; and to use these insights to inform the development of interventions tailored to the target groups for successful COVID-19 vaccination uptake.

The target audience for this research and intervention tool is a national/regional group with responsibility for ensuring high COVID-19 vaccination uptake. This group may include representatives from the immunization programme, the Ministry of Health, WHO, policy makers, and other United Nations and non-governmental organization partners. It can be used to target different groups prioritized for COVID-19 vaccination. Whilst the document focuses on COVID-19 vaccination, the described rapid approach can be used for any vaccination programme.

This is a living document adapted from, and applying the theoretical underpinning of, the following documents: Data for action: Achieving high uptake of COVID-19 vaccines (1), WHO field guide to qualitative research for new vaccine introduction (2), and WHO Tailoring Immunization Programmes (TIP) (3) including the Capability, motivation, and opportunity for behaviour change (COM-B) model.

To read the full guide, please click on the linked file.