BACKGROUND:
Lack of information may lead to anxiety or concern in a number of patient areas, for instance, cancer.

OBJECTIVE:
Determine factors that predict parents who disagree (versus agree or neutral) that they have access to all the information they need to make a good decision about their child's immunizations.

METHOD:
We analyzed a sample of parents with at least one child less than 18 years of age (n=1766) using a national panel survey (HealthStyles) conducted during July and August 2003. We performed multivariate analysis to determine differences between parents who disagreed and those who agreed/neutral that they had access to all the immunization information they needed to make a good decision about their child's immunizations.

RESULT:
Eleven percent of parents disagreed that they had access to all the information they needed to make a good decision about their child's immunizations. Compared to parents who agreed or were neutral, parents who disagreed were more likely to: report immunizations as being less versus more safe for children (OR=2.6, CI, 1.6, 4.1); disagree versus agree/neutral that they trust the vaccine advice of their child's main health care provider, (OR=4.6, CI, 2.5, 8.5); and be somewhat confident (OR=4.0, CI 2.5, 6.3) and not at all confident (OR=2.2, CI, 1.4, 3.5) versus very confident in the safety of routine childhood vaccines.

CONCLUSION:
Adequate information given by their child's provider may be one key step to reducing parental concerns about immunizations. Children's providers have a unique opportunity to impact parental confidence in vaccines. Providing basic information such as the names of the vaccines and the diseases they prevent may go a long way toward improving knowledge and confidence in childhood immunizations as well as improving the provider-patient relationship.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
Identify differences in parents who disagree that they have sufficient information to make a good decision about immunizing their child versus those who agree or are neutral.