Objective: The objective of this research was to get to know the level of knowledge and beliefs concerning preventive vaccination among parents of children up to 2 years of age
Material and methods: The survey was carried out in 2015 in a group of 120 parents of children aged 2 or less in the capital city of Warsaw and its vicinity. An original survey questionnaire was applied. Descriptive statistics methods were applied
Results: The most numerous researched group were people aged 20-40 (79.2%) with higher education (76.8%). The majority of respondents declared their positive attitude to rationality of vaccination (76.7%). Only 1.7% of respondents declared that they remained unconvinced as to giving their children preventive vaccination. Women were convinced about the usefulness and preventive effectiveness of preventive vaccination. Among all the respondents 11.7% claimed they did not get enough information on preventive vaccination from medical staff. According to 7.5% of the respondents, the information provided by medical personnel is incomprehensible and insufficient. According to 50.8% of the respondents the effectiveness of parents’ education in the scope of preventive vaccination administered to children should be improved
Conclusions: The parents of children aged 2 or less point out to lack of sufficient information on preventive vaccination. It is therefore necessary to involve medical personnel more in order to increase the effectiveness of education of small children’s parents in the discussed field
Keywords: vaccination; parents beliefs; prevention of infectious diseases; health promotion.