Increasing immunization compliance among schools and day care centers: Evidence from a randomized controlled trial

Jessica Leight and Elana Safran
Additional contact information
Elana Safran: Office of Evaluation Sciences

Journal of Behavioral Public Administration, 2019, vol. 2, issue 2

Abstract: This paper reports on the results of a randomized controlled trial in which researchers collaborated with a department of health in a mid-size city to evaluate the effectiveness of targeted communications highlighting descriptive social norms to increase immunization compliance across 700 schools. Schools were randomly selected to receive a twice-annual immunization compliance report card reporting in detail their compliance rates compared to other schools of the same school type; the comparison rates reported included the school-type average, average compliance among the top 10% of performers, and the city target of 98% compliance. Shifts in immunization compliance are tracked in a city-wide administrative vaccine registry. The results suggest that there was no significant difference in compliance rates between treatment and control schools six months post-treatment. To our knowledge, it is the first randomized controlled trial evaluating the use of descriptive social norms in increasing immunization compliance rates in a school-based setting. In addition, it serves as an example of embedding a behaviorally-informed experiment in a government program utilizing high-quality administrative data.

Keywords: Immunization compliance; School immunization policy; Social norms (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D90 D91 I12 Z00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journal-bpa.org/index.php/jbpa/article/download/55/42 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bpd:articl:v:2:y:2019:i:2:jbpa.22.55

DOI: 10.30636/jbpa.22.55

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Behavioral Public Administration from Center for Experimental and Behavioral Public Administration
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sebastian Jilke ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).