Willingness to Participate in a COVID-19 Vaccine Trial Among Young Adults in China

Background: With the demand for rapid COVID-19 vaccine development and evaluation, this paper aimed to describe the prevalence and correlates of willingness to participate in COVID-19 vaccine trials among young adults in China. A cross-sectional survey with 1,912 Chinese university students was conducted during March 2020. Bivariate and multivariate analyses were performed to identify variables associated with vaccine trials participation willingness. Findings: The majority of participants (64.01%) indicated willingness to participate in COVID-19 vaccine trials. Major concerns included side effects (69.04%), concerns from family members (63.02%), worries about handicap or death (58.05%), and infection through the vaccine (53.03%). Willingness to participate was associated with demographic variables (females and those from lower social class being more willing), trust in the public health system (B = 0.019 [0.002, 0.035]), lower levels of COVID-19 stigma (B = -0.022 [-0.031, -0.013]), COVID-19 prosocial behaviors (B = 0.008 [0.001, 0.015]), and information sources for COVID-19, including family not being a primary source of information (B = -0.144 [-0.218, -0.071]), as well as school (B = 0.162 [0.088, 0.236]) and TV (B = 0.132 [0.056, 0.203]) being primary sources of COVID-19 information. Interpretation: COVID-19 vaccine trial willingness was high overall. Attending to needs of vulnerable groups (e.g., lower social class) may be an important ethical consideration in COVID-19 vaccine research. Addressing psychosocial and information factors, including public mistrust, stigma, altruism, and family-related factors, may be important to COVID-19 vaccine development and uptake. Funding Statement: National Institute of Mental Health (T32MH078788) and Beijing Normal University (Fighting COVID-19 Research Fund).Declaration of Interests: The authors declare no competing interests.Ethics Approval Statement: The study was approved by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) at Beijing Normal University Faculty of Psychology.