Client: The Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
Project: Uncovering the drivers of vaccine adoption and hesitancy
Date: June 2021
Ripple Research supported the CDC’s work in the Middle East to uncover the drivers of vaccine adoption and hesitancy in order to help policymakers and government agencies make informed public health decisions.
The Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) works to protect the health security and safety of citizens through science and medical care. Ripple Research supported The CDC in the Middle East to uncover the drivers of vaccine adoption and hesitancy in order to help policy makers and government agencies make informed public health decisions. This topic has become increasingly salient in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The need to address vaccine hesitancy
To understand the nuances and complexities of vaccine hesitancy and drivers of vaccine adoption, we built one of the large COVID-related vaccine data sets for the CDC. Obtaining this information is essential for health agencies and global policy makers to empower them with the insights on the origins of rumour logs. It is also useful to provide them with the ability to track disinformation which may be driving uptake or refusal of vaccines.
Our approach
Our dataset consisted of hundreds of thousands of publicly available sources and focussed specifically on the three target countries of Lebanon, Oman and Jordan over a 3-month period in 2021.
Through the application of Ripple Research’s social research toolkit, we were able to better understand the large-scale sentiment of groups in the MENA region. Our sentiment analysis classified the polarity of texts surrounding vaccine hesitancy and adoption and involved developing an inclusive lexicon that accounted for both English and Arabic search phrases and keywords.
We subsequently conducted a demographic audience analysis to understand the unprompted conversations surrounding vaccines.
Our findings
Our systematic, data-driven approach revealed shifts in mention volume and sentiment and public emotions over time surrounding vaccine adoption and hesitancy.
We sought to measure how the information surrounding this topic travels, changes and is amplified over time. By doing so, we unearthed not only the most influential online content sources dominating the vaccine conversation but also provided the CDC with a deep-dive into the gender, professional background, interests and online behaviour of those engaging in such conversations. Furthermore, we also helped track various rumours around vaccines in a rumour log and triangulated this data with their on-the-ground and in-person survey data.