Childhood Vaccination Policy

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The Policy Studies Journal, Vol. 42, No. 4, 2014

Cultural Worldview and Preference for Childhood
Vaccination Policy
Geoboo Song, Carol L. Silva, and Hank C. Jenkins-Smith
In the face of the reemerging threat of preventable diseases and the simultaneous vaccine risk controversy, what explains variations in Americans’ policy preferences regarding childhood vaccinations? Using original data from a recent nationwide Internet survey of 1,213 American adults, this research seeks to explain differing public opinions on childhood vaccination policies and related issues of governance. As Mary Douglas and Aaron Wildavsky’s grid-group cultural theory of policy preference formation suggests, cultural biases have a significant impact on the
Because public policy can be considered an institutional element designed to resolve a particular social problem, and because public policy based upon due process and social consensus can be understood as a norm and rule that defines social relationships, one’s preference for a particular public policy is derived not from a simple benefit-cost calculation, but rather from individual evaluation of the nature of influence a given policy, rule, or norm has upon a preferred “way of life” (e.g., Jenkins-Smith & Herron, 2009;
Jenkins-Smith & Smith, 1994; Kahan, Braman, Cohen, Gastil, & Slovic, 2010; Lodge,
Wegrich, & McElroy, 2010; Silva & Jenkins-Smith, 2007; Swedlow, 1994, 2011;
Thompson, Ellis, & Wildavsky, 1990).
Though holding much broader theoretical and empirical applications, gridgroup cultural theory, in this case, can also be understood as providing an avenue
Given that life is largely governed by random events, fatalists are also likely to view the potential risks of vaccines as being as great as the benefits. Because they are likely to be skeptical of vaccine benefits and concerned about the risks, they will tend to support various vaccination exemption policies that would free them from responsibility for vaccinating themselves and their children. This type of cultural orientation will urge people to think that efforts to eliminate infectious diseases are
(at best) left to the individual, rather than depending on a (probably ineffectual) societal mandate. For fatalists, parents, not the government, should be the chief decision makers regarding children’s vaccinations.
This discussion regarding the hypothesized relationships between each distinctive cultural type and vaccine policy preferences are succinctly summarized and presented in Table 1, which is our primary concern in the following empirical analysis. It is noteworthy that although we proceeded with our theoretical discussion as if there existed a fixed prototypical cultural type of individuals, such