Inclusion and exclusion criteria

Quantitative studies will be eligible if vaccine uptake following implementation of self-consent procedures is reported for young people aged between 10 and 18 years.¹¹ Qualitative studies reporting the views and experiences of key stakeholders in relation adolescent self-consent procedures will also be included. Studies related to consent procedures solely targeting parents of adolescents or early childhood and adult vaccination programmes will not be eligible for inclusion. Relevant stakeholders will vary with context but are likely to include young people, parents or primary caregivers, healthcare professionals, policy makers, community leaders and teachers.

We will include a range of study designs. To determine whether self-consent procedures can increase uptake of vaccination programmes, primary studies reporting parallel group randomised controlled trials, quasi-randomised trials, non-randomised controlled trials, controlled before and after studies, historically controlled studies and retrospective or prospective cohort studies that include a control group will be eligible. Qualitative studies which use interviews, focus groups, observations or open-ended questions allowing free-text responses in questionnaires will be included to explore views and behaviours related to young people’s self-consent for vaccination.

Conference abstracts, reviews, editorials, opinion pieces, dissertations, letters and books will only be included if they present original data. There will be no language or country of origin restriction imposed and any relevant full text paper that is not written in English will be translated.