Table 2.

Informal networks

Participant 1	‘We get more from the community. We just like sort of ask each other. We have friends and then we have these people that help people with health problems and we basically go to them and they more or less know what you should or shouldn't do and everything’
Participant 3	‘It's the same as anything, you just ask family and friends’
Participant 8	‘We are a close-knit community, even linked to all the orthodox Jewish communities internationally, if something bad happens to someone over in New York, we'll know it in an instant (…) Anything that would happen on that way, we would hear about it soon enough and it would definitely affect people's decisions I think. Things happen and you hear about it’
Participant 16	‘The truth is, I'm hearing (about MMR side effects) mostly from friends. I don't really read much papers as I don't have time for any of that. And I don't have the internet, so… I ask friends what they've seen articles about or what they've heard about. I haven't done much research’
Key informant 3, outreach worker	‘People here don't read newspapers, secular newspapers, they certainly don't have TVs, for the most part they don't listen to the radio. So there's a lack of knowledge about the outside world. So a lot of community learning here is third hand, from someone else which can be great because it's instant but it can also be detrimental because it's like Chinese whispers. You only need one poor child to have been affected (adversely) because of immunization and that will spread around the community’
Key informant 9, outreach worker	‘It does go by family groupings and then out to friends. It's a very social community. People do interact very much. If lady X says that her child was fine when she was born and it wasn't until after she gave that injection that her child became unwell, that led to a retardation and a disability then everybody gets scared. Everybody thinks “Oh that's a dangerous one to give. I think I'll stay away from it now even though I gave my older ones it”.’
Key informant 1, outreach worker	‘It's like Chinese whispers, you know, it [a story] can start off as one thing maybe and then it can just blow out of all proportions. Each one adds their own little something! The messages from the professionals, the GPs and the health visitors, are all going out “yes you must, yes you must” but this one will ask her sister “Did you get..?”, “Oh no, I didn't do that”, “Oh well then I'm not going to”. They don't even know why!’