Understanding public sentiments and behaviours around immunization is critical for UNICEF’s programmes. A Social and Community Listening (SCL) taxonomy provides a structured way to capture and analyze conversations, both online and offline, about vaccines. It serves as a classification system to tag and organize community “voices”, from social media posts to village meeting feedback, into meaningfulcategories. This immunization-specific taxonomy is grounded in UNICEF’s Behavioural Drivers Model (BDM), which emphasizes that behaviour is influenced by a mix of psychological, social, and environmental drivers. By aligning with BDM, the taxonomy ensures that our listening captures not just what people say about vaccines, but why, mapping underlying factors like personal beliefs, social norms, and structural barriers.

This taxonomy is intended for practical use in global or local immunization programmes. It will help Social and Behaviour Change (SBC) teams and partners to systematically code and interpret discussions about immunization, especially around vaccine hesitancy and misinformation. It will also help understand vaccine related behaviours, concerns and questions people have and information gaps that exist around vaccination. These insights can inform programmatic action. Importantly, it aligns with existing UNICEF frameworks on SCL, immunization (e.g. Immunization Roadmap 2030), and behavioural science,principles, ensuring consistency with proven approaches and ethical standards. The taxonomy is designed to be used across online channels (social media, news, blogs, etc.) and offline channels (community meetings, radio call-in shows, health worker feedback), providing a unified lens for listening wherever conversations occur.

How it’s structured: We organize core themes and recurring narratives about immunization under the three BDM driver categories, Psychological (individual-level factors), Social (interpersonal/community factors),
and Environmental (contextual/structural factors). Within each category, specific sub-themes capture common concerns, questions, beliefs, and contexts related to vaccines. For each theme, we highlight typical narratives (what people are saying), and key terms/phrases that often appear. Subsequent sections discuss considerations for data collection (online vs offline), ethical principles in SCL, and best practices to localize this global taxonomy for regional or country-specific use.

Demand Hub

The resource is included in the following table: