As many as 31% of very religious persons in Croatia completely agree with the assertion that pharmaceutical companies hide the dangers of vaccines, and 35% agree with the assertion that people trust scientists more than they should, the Jutarnji List daily of Saturday reports.

This is only one of the findings of a survey conducted by a group of researchers from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Osijek, the Osijek Faculty of Medicine, the Zagreb Faculty of Medicine and the Zagreb Institute of Social Sciences.

“We wanted to find out who opposes vaccination and whether there are differences in that regard between traditional and COVID-19 vaccines. Trust in science and scientists has been declining for years, and the COVID-19 pandemic has made that crisis of trust evident. Scepticism regarding vaccination and refusal to have children vaccinated existed also before the pandemic, but they increased paradoxically during the pandemic,” said Zeljko Pavic, a sociologist from the Josip Juraj Strossmayer University in Osijek, speaking about the motives for the survey.

The survey was conducted in July 2022 on a representative quota sample of 1,500 adults, with the quota structure corresponding to the population’s demographic characteristics. The paper was published recently in the Sage Open journal.

The survey was conducted as part of a research project financed by the Croatian Science Foundation.

Findings about vaccination against COVID-19 show that around 26% of persons refused to get vaccinated against the disease, 15% were not sure about what to do and postponed their decision, while only around 7% disagreed with the assertion that vaccines are a good way to protect children against infectious diseases.

“The reason for such differences in support for vaccines for COVID-19 and children’s diseases is probably doubt about new vaccines, which is evidenced by the fact that as many as 40% of the respondents believe new vaccines carry much more risk than the older ones. COVID-19 vaccines were developed fast and in special circumstances. Our research group had already established, in an earlier survey, that the speed of vaccine development gave rise to doubt about its quality and motives for its development, even among a portion of medical professionals,” Pavic said.