SA vaccine hesitancy: National surveys reveal conflicting data

First published by GroundUp.

UJ/HSRC survey

This week, the University of Johannesburg’s (UJ) Centre for Social Change, in collaboration with the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC), released the results of the fourth round of their massive Covid-19 Democracy Survey, which looked at vaccine acceptance and hesitancy in South Africa. 

The headline findings were that the overall rate of vaccine acceptance was 72%, up from 67% recorded in the previous round, which was conducted in late December 2020. This figure includes those who have had the vaccine already, who would definitely get the vaccine, and who probably would get the vaccine.

The survey collected results from 7,889 people between 25 June and 20 July 2021. Most answers were gathered via Moya, a messaging application used daily by 800,000 people that does not charge for data use. These responses were supplemented by a telephonic survey of 258 people over the age of 60 to ensure a more demographically representative sample. From this larger sample, 2,370 responses were randomly taken to produce their analysis.

Nids-Cram survey

In July, the National Income Dynamics Study — Coronavirus Rapid Mobile Survey (Nids-Cram) found that vaccine acceptance had risen among their sample of around 5,000 respondents. Between February/March 2021 and April/May 2021 (the fourth and fifth waves of the survey), the share of people who would accept a vaccine rose from 71% to 76%. The Nids-Cram findings are therefore consistent with the UJ/HSRC results.

Afrobarometer survey

But one major poll, the Afrobarometer survey, run by the Institute of Justice and Reconciliation, found that vaccine acceptance was far lower than the figures reported by Nids-Cram or UJ/HSRC.

According to Afrobarometer’s results, just 43% of respondents were either very or somewhat likely to get the vaccine: 12% of people were somewhat unlikely to get the vaccine, and a massive 42% of respondents were very unlikely to get the vaccine.

This survey, while not as large a sample as Nids-Cram or UJ/HSRC, was of 1,600 adults, carefully selected to ensure that the respondents are representative of South Africa’s geographic, age and gender distribution.

What explains this difference?

At their presentation of the results on Tuesday 17 August, UJ Professor Kate Alexander, who led the UJ/HSRC survey along with Dr Narnia Bohler-Muller of the HSRC, said that Afrobarometer’s results were “misleading”.

Speaking to GroundUp, Alexander said that “the issue is overwhelmingly one of question formation (and placement), which is linked to the purpose and geographical scope of the survey. If you are going to compare surveys over time it is necessary to take question formation into account.”

Question formation and placement are the manner and order in which the questions are asked.

In the Afrobarometer survey, the question immediately prior to the one that was used to tally vaccine acceptance rates was this: “How much do you trust the government to ensure that any vaccine for Covid-19 that is developed or offered to South African citizens is safe before it is used in this country?”

The vaccine acceptance question that followed was presented to respondents using this formulation: “If a vaccine for Covid-19 becomes available and the government says it is safe, how likely are you to try to get vaccinated?”

The issue that Alexander raises is that the vaccine acceptance question follows one that interrogates trust in government (also very low — “not all” was chosen by 43% of respondents). Further, the question itself combines two ideas: trust in the vaccine with trust in the government.

By contrast, UJ/HSRC asked: “If a Covid-19 vaccine became available to you, would you take it?”. People could respond with:

• I’ve already had the vaccine;


• Yes, I would definitely get the vaccine;


• I would probably get the vaccine;


• I would probably not get the vaccine;


• No, I definitely would not get the vaccine; and


• Don’t know.