Social media engagement association with human papillomavirus and vaccine awareness and perceptions: Results from the 2017 US Health Information National Trends Survey

Due to social media's ability to publicize misinformation about vaccines, there is a need to study associations between social media engagement (SME) with human papillomavirus (HPV) and vaccine-related awareness and beliefs. Therefore, the study objectives were to (1) describe the SME of a nationally representative sample of US adults, and (2) determine the associations between SME and HPV-related awareness, HPV-related knowledge, HPV vaccine-related awareness, and perceived HPV vaccine efficacy. In 2019, we completed a secondary analysis of the 2017 Health Information National Trends Survey (Cycle 5.1). We created the SME index from 5 social media items. For each outcome variable, 3 models using binary and multinomial logistic regression were estimated. SME in the sample (n = 3171) was low (M = 0.9; range: 0–2). Respondents with higher SME had higher odds of HPV awareness (AOR = 1.56; 95% CI = 1.23, 1.99). Higher SME was associated with awareness of the HPV vaccine (AOR = 1.46; 95% CI = 1.16, 1.85). Respondents with higher SME had higher odds of perceiving HPV vaccine to be “not at all successful” (AOR = 2.22; 95% CI = 1.16, 4.24), “a little successful” (AOR = 1.99; 95% CI = 1.35, 2.94), “pretty successful” (AOR = 1.40; 95% CI = 1.04, 1.89), and “very successful” (AOR = 1.40; 95% CI = 1.02, 1.92) compared to those who selected “don't know” after adjusting for demographics and internet use. Our study highlights novel findings using a comprehensive SME index with a national sample providing insight to leverage existing consumer behaviors to better connect and disseminate accurate HPV information in a more strategic manner.