Brief Interventions to Increase HPV Vaccine Acceptance in School-based Health Centers

Using health behavior theories and theories related to the effects of persuasive messages (i.e., inoculation theory), we plan to: 1. Systematically test the effects of brief persuasive message interventions on receipt of the first dose of HPV vaccine; and 2. evaluate the effects of the interventions on followup with subsequent doses of vaccine (using reminder notices with persuasive message content). One set of interventions will involve a comparison of a 1 sided message, which only emphasizes the positive aspects of a recommended behavior, with a 2 sided message, which presents negative aspects of the behavior followed by positive counterarguments. A second set of interventions will involve a test of a social compliance (foot-in-the-door technique, in which half of the parent participants will be asked to respond to a high compliance request (i.e., a request likely to generate high compliance, such as, "Do you want to protect your daughter from cancer? or for male children, "Do you want to protect your son from genital warts?"before subsequently being asked about actually having their adolescents vaccinated. The other half of the parents will not receive a high compliance request. Parents of 11-14 year old adolescents will be randomized to the two sets of interventions, resulting in a 2 X 2 design: message sidedness (1 sided; 2 sided) and social compliance request (yes; no). The specific aims of this proposal are to evaluate the 1) efficacy of 2 sided vs. 1 sided messages on rates of HPV vaccination; 2) the efficacy of a social compliance intervention on rates of HPV vaccination; and 3) potential moderators and mediators of message effect on vaccine acceptance.