Collection

Attitudes to vaccination: national surveys

Surveys of parents and young people asking for their views on vaccines and the diseases they protect against.

• From: UK Health Security Agency
• Published: 24 January 2017
• Last updated: 20 March 2024 — See all updates

The national vaccination programme in England is supported and informed by surveys exploring knowledge, beliefs and attitudes to vaccines and experience of vaccine services.

The survey of parents’ attitudes to the infant programme has been running since 1991 and the first survey of teenagers and their parents took place in 2017. These surveys are usually commissioned or undertaken every year and a high level of consistency in the questions included has been maintained.

The surveys explore parental attitudes to vaccines given to babies, children and young people, and the attitudes of young people themselves to vaccination, to inform planning of the programme. The surveys are an important source of detailed information about views and experiences.

These surveys were undertaken as face-to-face interviews in the home up to 2019 before the emergence of coronavirus (COVID-19). The surveys have since been conducted online.

See the UK Government Web Archive for earlier years’ surveys.

What parents think about childhood vaccination in England

A national survey of parental attitudes to childhood vaccinations was published in 2017. It compared results with those in earlier comparable surveys covering a 10 year period.

• Childhood vaccines: parental attitudes survey 2023
  • 20 March 2024
  • Research and analysis
• Childhood vaccines: parental attitudes survey 2022
  • 20 February 2023
  • Research and analysis
• Childhood vaccines: parental attitudes survey 2019
  • 16 November 2022
  • Research and analysis
• Childhood immunisation: parental attitudes survey 2018
  • 5 February 2018
  • Correspondence

What young people and their parents think about teenage vaccination in England

• Immunisation survey 2023: attitudes of young people and parents
  • 17 November 2023
  • Research and analysis
• Immunisation survey 2019: attitudes of young people and parents
  • 18 July 2019
  • Correspondence

Published 24 January 2017
Last updated 20 March 2024 + show all updates

1. 20 March 2024

   Added 'Childhood vaccines: parental attitudes survey 2023'.

2. 17 November 2023

   Added 'Immunisation survey 2023: attitudes of young people and parents'.

3. 31 January 2023

   Added 'Childhood vaccines: parental attitudes survey 2022'.

4. 16 December 2022

   Added link to 2017 survey results.

5. 16 November 2022

   Added 'Childhood vaccines: parental attitudes survey 2019' and updated survey information.

6. 18 July 2019

   Renamed the collection and added the 'Immunisation survey 2019: attitudes of young people and parents' to the collection. Added a link to previous years' surveys on the UK Government Web Archive.

7. 5 February 2018

   The Annual 2018 survey letter has been added to this page.

8. 19 January 2018

   Added dates of annual survey 2018.

9. 24 January 2017

   First published.