Research and analysis

Childhood vaccines: parental attitudes survey 2025 findings

Published 10 July 2025

Background on the survey

The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) designed an online survey to find out what parents of children aged 2 months to 5 years think about vaccination. UKHSA commissioned the commercial research organisation, IPSOS, to undertake the survey on its behalf.

In a change to previous surveys on parents’ attitudes to vaccination commissioned by UKHSA, which had been England only, parents were sampled from across the UK. There were 1,730 respondents who had a child aged 2 months to 3 years 3 months and 1,542 respondents who had a child aged 3 years 4 months to 4 years.

Key findings

Vaccine confidence

Parents have a high level of confidence in children’s vaccination in the UK. Most parents agreed that vaccines work for children (87%), that they are safe (85%) and that they trusted them (84%).

Disease severity

Most parents recognise the seriousness of many of the diseases that vaccines protect against. The vaccine preventable diseases rated most often as ‘very serious’ for their child to catch by parents of babies and younger children were septicaemia (84%) and meningitis (83%).

The Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) vaccine for pregnant women, to protect their babies in early infancy, was introduced into the UK programme in 2024. RSV was rated as ‘very serious’ by 60% of parents of babies and younger children and ‘fairly serious’ by a further 25%.

Chickenpox was seen as less serious with 27% of parents rating it as ‘very serious’ and 26% of parents rated it as ‘fairly serious’.

Information sources

Seventy-six percent of parents reported having seen or heard something about vaccines for children in the previous 12 months. Most of this information had come from official sources such as health professionals and NHS websites.

Most parents (80%) reported only seeing or hearing information in favour of vaccines, 12% reported mixed information and only 3% reported information that was against vaccines.

A majority of parents (65%) had not seen or heard anything that would make them concerned about any childhood vaccines.

Just under half of parents who reported seeing information that made them concerned or worried about their baby or young child having a vaccine (47%) said they saw this information on social media.  

Trust in sources of vaccine information

The NHS and healthcare professionals are the most trusted sources of information on vaccines among parents with a child aged 4 years or under.

When asked to rank different sources of vaccine information:

• GPs were the most trusted source of information with 67% of parents ranking them in their top 3 most trusted sources (out of 12 sources)
• 59% ranked the NHS in their top 3
• 15% ranked pharmacists in their top 3
• only 7% ranked the internet in their top 3
• only 3% ranked social media in their top 3

Discussions with health professionals

Eighty-six percent of all parents felt they had received enough information to make an informed decision about vaccines offered to their children.

Eighty-nine percent of parents of children aged 3 years 2 months and under reported that they had had an opportunity to discuss childhood vaccination with a health professional before their child’s first vaccines. Six percent could not remember whether they had had a discussion. Twenty-seven percent reported a discussion before the baby was born, almost half (48%) had had the discussion soon after birth and the rest had had the discussion at the vaccination visit (14%).

Health visitors (51%) and midwives (39%) were the health professionals most commonly reported as having vaccine discussions with parents before their child aged 3 years 2 months or under had their first baby vaccine.

Despite most parents who had discussed vaccines with a health professional (79%) having already decided that their babies would have all the vaccines offered before the discussion, 53% of parents reported feeling more confident about having their baby vaccinated after talking to a health professional. Fifteen percent of parents who had not made up their mind about vaccination, decided in favour of vaccination following the discussion.

Satisfaction with vaccination services

Eighty-six percent of all parents were either fairly satisfied or very satisfied with their most recent vaccine experience. Most parents were satisfied with all aspects including the information provided at the visit (82%), the behaviour or attitude of the health professional (86%) and how their questions were answered (78%).

Eighty-one percent of parents agreed that general practices had good facilities to provide childhood vaccines.

Most parents (87%) like to be reminded of upcoming appointments by text or email.

Sixty-seven percent of parents agreed that they would prefer to take their child to the GP surgery for their vaccines rather than a pharmacy or other service.

Technical details: survey information and methodology

A total of 3,272 parents in the UK completed the survey online between 16 January and 12 February 2025. To be eligible, parents needed to have at least one child aged 2 months to 4 years.

A total of 2,493 respondents were recruited from IIS (Ipsos Interactive Services) access panel and panel partners, and the remaining 779 were recruited from the Ipsos Knowledge Panel.

Interlocking quotas were applied on the following variables, for sample recruited through IIS panel and partner panels: gender, age, UK nations, and English regions. These quotas were based on Office for National Statistics (ONS) population figures for households with a child aged 4 or under,

No quotas were applied to the sample achieved through the Ipsos Knowledge Panel, as this panel utilises random probability unclustered address-based sampling.

Interlocking weighting based on ONS population figures was applied on the following variables: age and work status within nations, and English regions. The results are representative of the population of parents with a child aged 4 or under in the UK and in each of the 4 nations, in terms of age and work status within nations, and English regions.

This work was carried out in accordance with the requirements of the international quality standard for market research, ISO 20252.

Resources

A slide set of the survey findings is available to download.