Blume, Holger

Heiden, Stefanie

Melk, Anette

Paulsen, Mira

Schaefer, Paula

Schmidt, Bernhard M. W.

Stanislawski, Nils

Stiesch, Meike

Sugianto, Rizky Indrameikha

Tanisik, Fatma

Zychlinsky Scharff, Anna

English

Institutionelles Repositorium der Leibniz Universität Hannover

Vol.:(0123456789) https://doi.org/10.1007/s00431-022-04432-9REPLYResponse to “Letter in response to ‘Students’ age and parental level of education influence COVID‑19 vaccination hesitancy’”Anna Zychlinsky Scharff1 · Mira Paulsen2 · Paula Schaefer3 · Fatma Tanisik3 · Rizky Indrameikha Sugianto2 · Nils Stanislawski4 · Holger Blume4 · Bernhard M. W. Schmidt5 · Stefanie Heiden6 · Meike Stiesch3 · Anette Melk2Received: 1 March 2022 / Revised: 1 March 2022 / Accepted: 2 March 2022 © The Author(s) 2022To the Editor,We thank the authors of the Letter to the Editor for their interest in our work and  appreciate the opportunity to reply. Firstly, Sakatsume and O’Shea assert that by report-ing on the percentage of students who had already received a COVID-19 vaccination, a “severe bias” may have been introduced into the study. We respectfully disagree: already vaccinated individuals were not included in the mixed model analysis examining the yes/no answer to the intention-to-vaccinate questionnaire. The figure in our report clearly delineates which study participants were vaccinated and which were not, and excludes the already-vaccinated from the analysis of vaccine hesitancy. Furthermore, we contend that failing to report these numbers, i.e., excluding vacci-nated students from the study, would itself introduce bias. Therefore, we report vaccination status as well as intention-to-vaccinate to clearly denote these separate groups in our report.Secondly, we agree that examination of students’ educa-tion levels would be a relevant and interesting approach. We examined two secondary schools with different levels of education: one was a “Gymnasium”, which is the most academically advanced among the three types of German secondary schools and primarily prepares students for uni-versity. The second school was a “Gesamtschule”, which combines the three types of German secondary schools and enables students to learn at an appropriate individual level, preparing for an academic as well as non-academic vocation depending on the individual graduation level. Because the later school included a heterogeneous population, we could not draw direct comparisons between the two schools — some students at the Gesamtschule received a very similar education to those at the Gymnasium while others received a more vocational, work-experience-oriented curriculum. Indeed, the categorization of German secondary schools by academic strength is increasingly complex and blurry as a movement away from early sorting has taken place. Regard-less, we enthusiastically endorse the call by Drs. Sakatsume and O’Shea for more data on student education level and vaccine hesitancy in future studies.Lastly, Drs. Sakatsume and O’Shea perceived discrep-ancies in the study population. To clarify, the longitudinal study we conducted began with one school in June 2020, and a second school was added in November 2020. In Paulsen et al. [1], we report longitudinal data from the first school, as this was the only institution for which we had already gath-ered a year’s worth of data. Since Paulsen et al. [1] examines changing viewpoints over time, returning to the same set of students regularly was paramount. As our paper seeks to quantify vaccine hesitancy at one specific time point, we Communicated by Peter de Winter.Anna Zychlinsky Scharff and Mira Paulsen contributed equally and are both considered first authors.This reply refers to the comment available online at https:// doi. org/ 10. 1007/ s00431- 022- 04433-8. * Anette Melk  Melk.Anette@mh-hannover.de1 Department of Pediatric Hematology and Oncology, Hannover Medical School, Hannover, Germany2 Department of Pediatric Kidney, Liver, and Metabolic Diseases, Hannover Medical School, Carl-Neuberg-Str. 1, 30625 Hannover, Germany3 Department of Prosthetic Dentistry and Biomedical Material Research, Hannover Medical School, Hannover, Germany4 Institute of Microelectronic Systems, Leibniz University Hanover, Hannover, Germany5 Department of Nephrology and Hypertension, Hannover Medical School, Hannover, Germany6 Institute of Innovation Research, Technology Management & Entrepreneurship, Leibniz University Hanover, Hannover, Germany/ Published online: 19 April 2022European Journal of Pediatrics (2022) 181:2889–28901 3included all the study participants at that time point — from both schools — in the current analysis. The number of stu-dents included as well as the fact that they attend two schools is reported in the “Methods”.Vaccine hesitancy is a crucial issue in controlling future epidemics, and we thank Drs. Sakatsume and O’Shea for raising their points openly to promote the discussion of this important topic.Sincerely,Anna Zychlinsky Scharff, Mira Paulsen, Anette Melk.Funding Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL.Declarations Conflict of interest The authors declare no competing interests.Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attri-bution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adapta-tion, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http:// creat iveco mmons. org/ licen ses/ by/4. 0/.Reference 1. Paulsen M, Zychlinsky Scharff A, de Cassan K, Sugianto RI, Blume C, Blume H, Christmann M, Hauß C, Illig T, Jonczyk R, Klopp N, Kopfnagel V, Lichtinghagen R, Lucas H, Luhr A, Mutschler F, Pietschmann T, Pott P- C, Prokein J, Melk A (2021) Children and adolescents’ behavioral patterns in response to esca-lating COVID-19 restriction reveal sex and age differences. J Ado-lesc Health 1–9. https:// doi. org/ 10. 1016/j. jadoh ealth. 2021. 11. 021Publisher's Note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.2890 European Journal of Pediatrics (2022) 181:2889–2890

Response to “Letter in response to ‘Students’ age and parental level of education influence COVID-19 vaccination hesitancy’”

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Response to “Letter in response to ‘Students’ age and parental level of education influence COVID-19 vaccination hesitancy’”

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Institutionelles Repositorium der Leibniz Universität Hannover