Most Frequently Asked Questions Regarding COVID-19 Vaccines Pertain to Safety and Efficacy

The public’s most commonly asked questions about COVID-19 vaccines included those pertaining to safety and efficacy, and government sources provide the most transparent and highest-quality web-based information for answering questions, according to a recent study published in JMIR Infodemiology.

Researchers aimed to characterize the content of the most frequently asked questions (FAQs) about COVID-19 vaccines using Google’s RankBrain machine learning algorithm and examine the information transparency and quality of sources used by Google to answer the FAQs.

Among the 28 FAQs regarding COVID-19 vaccines, 78.6% sought factual information. Of those, 40.9% asked about safety and efficacy. Media outlets made up 42.9% of source types and 39.3% were government sources. Government sources most commonly met Journal of the American Medical Association benchmark criteria.

“The most frequently asked COVID-19 vaccine-related questions pertained to vaccine safety and efficacy,” concluded the study authors. “We found that government sources provided the most transparent and highest-quality web-based COVID-19 vaccine-related information,’ they continued. “Recognizing common questions and concerns about COVID-19 vaccines may assist in improving vaccination efforts.”

Reference

Sajjadi NB, Shepard S, Ottwell R, et al. Examining the public's most frequently asked questions regarding COVID-19 vaccines using search engine analytics in the United States: observational study. JMIR Infodemiology. 2021;1(1):e28740. doi:10.2196/28740