Determinants of physician attitudes towards the new selective measles vaccine mandate in Germany

BMC Public Health

Table 2 Expected consequences of the mandate and correlation with attitude towards mandates for pediatricians vs. others

Expected consequences of mandate	Mean (SD)^a			Correlation^b with attitude towards mandates^c
Expected consequences of mandate	Pediatricians	Other physicians	p-value	Pediatricians	Other physicians
I expect no consequences.	2.97 (1.29)	3.16 (1.33)	0.014	0.11	0.09
Counseling patients will require more effort.	3.01 (1.13)	3.23 (1.09)	0.001	−0.16	− 0.15
Counseling patients will require less effort.	2.01 (0.96)	1.94 (0.87)	0.203	0.17	0.12
The mandate will be a burden for the patient provider relationship.	2.11 (0.95)	1.98 (0.97)	0.018	−0.34	− 0.35
I expect a higher amount of work for issuing certificates about measles protection to patients.	2.47 (1.12)	2.33 (1.00)	0.017	−0.19	−0.24
I expect that patients will press me to issue medical exemptions from the mandate.	3.38 (1.24)	3.16 (1.26)	0.003	−0.04	−0.19
I expect more children to be vaccinated on time.	3.47 (1.06)	3.93 (0.90)	< 0.001	0.25	0.35

Bold denotes significance at p < 0.05.
^aLikert scale items (1 = disagree; 5 = strongly agree)
^bPearson’s method
^cMean score ‘attitude towards mandates’ consisting of four items (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.88) expressing negative attitude (score = 1) to positive attitude (score = 5)

ISSN: 1471-2458