We launched a survey a few weeks ago to find out what our readers were doing about flu shots this year. It was intended as a quick experiment while we thought about how to administer such surveys on Z Recommends, but the results were pretty interesting.

310 respondents completed the survey before it was locked down. That was pretty good, considering that the survey host, Polldaddy, says you're only entitled to 100 responses with a free account. (You can read an exchange between myself and someone from the company here, where I've started writing occasionally about blog consulting and blog development.) Of those 310 respondents:

• 81% have a child between the ages of six months and two years.


• 13% say their youngest child is 3-4 years old.


• 54% say their youngest child over six months old was vaccinated for the flu this year.

Of the 46% who say their youngest child over the age of six months was not vaccinated against the flu (as of a couple of weeks ago):

• 50% said they did not intend to, out of concerns about the safety of administering this vaccine to their child.


• 21% said they wouldn't, because they don't think it helps.


• 17% said they still planned to, and just hadn't done it yet.


• 13% said they didn't know if they would or not, or that they wanted to but weren't sure if they'd get around to it.

51% of all respondents said they did not get the flu vaccine themselves in 2007. If we'd taken more time in setting this survey up, we would have used Polldaddy's question-skipping feature to create a bit of branching, so we could determine the relationship between parents' self-vaccination and their vaccination of their young children.

In our own family, we have taken a relatively cautious approach to vaccinations in general. Z has had almost all of the recommended vaccines (including a pair of single-dose flu vaccines this year), but we have made ourselves nuisances at our pediatrician's office with a customized infant/toddler vaccination schedule, increasing well-baby visits to reduce batching. In the process, we learned how to say "no" to a doctor - something everyone needs to learn sooner or later in life.

Thanks to everyone who participated! We'll be doing more extensive surveys in the future, perhaps after we trial out a couple more providers.