Assessment of behavioral and social drivers influencing community awareness, knowledge, perception, and attitudes toward human papillomavirus vaccination in Sierra Leone
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Understanding community awareness, knowledge, perceptions, and attitudes toward the Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine is important for improving vaccination coverage. Limited research exists on the behavioral and social factors influencing HPV vaccine uptake in Sierra Leone. As a result, the study seeks to assess the behavioral and social factors influencing HPV vaccination in Sierra Leone. A convenience sampling approach was used for the selection of the participants at the district and chiefdom level. Data were collected via the KOBO collect tool. A total of 1345 respondents took part in filling out the survey. However, due to missing information, 1231 responses were employed for analysis using Excel software. Virtually all participants in the Eastern, Northern, and Western regions had heard of HPV, with healthcare workers being the primary source of information (49.8%). However, a significant knowledge gap was observed, as most respondents in the four regions could not link HPV to cervical cancer. Concerns about vaccine safety, particularly side effects (39.7%) and fertility issues (28.0%), were prevalent. Despite these concerns, over 75% of respondents expressed a willingness to vaccinate their children, though actual vaccine uptake was low (less than 25% across all regions). Cultural and religious beliefs were found to influence attitudes toward vaccination, with regional variations in the perceived impact of these factors. Although awareness of HPV is high in Sierra Leone, knowledge gaps and misconceptions about the vaccine’s safety and its link to cervical cancer persist. Communication strategies should focus on (a) educating the public about the connection between HPV and cervical cancer and (b) addressing misconceptions about vaccine safety, particularly regarding side effects and fertility. Healthcare workers remain a trusted source of information, but peer influence should also be leveraged to improve vaccine uptake. These findings highlight the need for targeted public health interventions to increase HPV vaccination coverage in Sierra Leone.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".