Social cognitive theory predictors of HPV vaccination intentions among college women at a southeastern university

Background: Human papillomavirus (HPV) is the most common sexually transmitted infection in the United States, with approximately 50 percent of sexually active individuals acquiring HPV at least once in their lifetime. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to operationalize the social cognitive theory (SCT) constructs of expectations, self-control, self-efficacy for getting HPV vaccine, self-efficacy for overcoming barriers to get HPV vaccine, situational perception about the HPV vaccine, and HPV knowledge to predict behavioral intention to get HPV vaccine in the next six months. Methods: Instrumentation involved a panel of six experts to evaluate face and content validity, Cronbach’s alpha to assess internal consistency, and multivariate regression to gauge predictive validity. Results: A total of 197 unvaccinated, undergraduate women between 18 and 26 years of age, from a large southeastern university were surveyed (α = 0.05, 1-β = 0.80, ρ = 0.20). Approximately 91% of respondents had heard of HPV, and 88.3% had heard of the HPV vaccine. Participants’ intentions were in the mid range, with a mean intention of 5.44 out of 12. Situational perception (β= 0.332) and self-control (β= 0.292) were significant predictors (p < 0.001), accounting for approximately 23.5%% of HPV vaccination intentions. Conclusions: The instrumentation process resulted in a psychometrically valid and reliable tool to predict HPV vaccination intentions in college women. Results of this study suggest that practitioners should target situational perception about the HPV vaccine and self-control for getting the HPV vaccine within interventions to increase HPV vaccination intentions among college women.