The global and Slovenian problem of hesitation and non-vaccination of children has existed for a long time. Parents’ decision to have their children vaccinated is influenced by trust in the health care system and health care professionals, but adequate vaccination coverage also requires knowledge and a positive attitude toward vaccines and vaccination. Attitudes are influenced at a young age. For this reason, in this master’s thesis, we wanted to examine the attitudes and knowledge of secondary school students. We wanted to compare data according to school programme, gender, grade level and also according to whether students report having been vaccinated against childhood diseases or not. We checked students’ knowledge and attitudes through the 1KA online survey, in which we published a questionnaire with a test. We statistically analysed the obtained data using IBM SPSS. The results of our survey showed that students’ biological knowledge was insufficient. They answered less than half of the questions correctly. In addition, the students of the vocational upper secondary school have less knowledge than the students of the general upper secondary school (grammar school). On average, students' attitudes are positive; however, their attitude toward who should decide whether to vaccinate a child is unclear, as is their attitude toward pharmaceutical companies that promote vaccination. Regarding gender, males have more knowledge and more positive attitudes, and we observed the same pattern in positive attitudes for students who have been vaccinated. Students who do not know whether or not they were vaccinated in childhood have the least knowledge.
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