Social and behavioural insights: Understanding people to strengthen vaccine trust and access (VBAP)
Researchers
Ève Dubé, Marie-Ève Trottier
Key takeaways
- Vaccination varies sharply by age — with younger demographics being more vaccine hesitant.
- Vaccine hesitancy remains present across many groups.
- Vaccine fatigue is real, but collective responsibility remains strong.
- Knowledge gaps persist across the therapeutic pipeline: from how vaccines are developed to delivering vaccines to the public.
- Trust is concentrated among certain messengers.
Overview
Understanding how people perceive risk, make decisions, and build trust is central to Canada’s pandemic readiness. We conduct the Vaccine Behaviours, Attitudes, and Perceptions (VBAP) survey twice yearly to capture the complex social and behavioural landscape shaping vaccine acceptance and uptake.
These surveys are conducted twice per year with approximately 2,500 Canadian adults, including oversamples of parents, Indigenous people, racialized communities, newcomers, and health-care workers. Data are weighted to census benchmarks, enabling both broad trends and subgroup insights.
By tracking these dynamics over time, the BRC’s surveys help identify where trust and equity gaps may emerge, and where targeted interventions can support readiness before the next pandemic hits. Surveys are one key tool among multiple approaches the BRC uses to generate actionable, human-centered research that bridges science and society.
Explore the survey findings.