Majority of Freiburg school pupils approve of compulsory mask wearing and vaccination in pandemic

To find out how Freiburg school pupils are doing in the enduring corona pandemic, Dr. Sebastian Jäckle together with Dr. Thomas Waldvogel from the Department of Political Science at the University of Freiburg in cooperation with the Landeszentrale für politische Bildung Baden-Württemberg conducted a survey of 636 school pupils from the Freiburg region. This revealed that 63 percent of teenagers are in favor of general compulsory vaccinations, and 77 percent support compulsory mask wearing in school. The survey casts light on the political attitudes of the teenagers, their experiences during the pandemic, and their opinion of the decisions taken by politicians. The survey also included a quiz to measure the teenagers' knowledge about the coronavirus.

The school pupils took the survey between 31 January and 11 February 2022. Over 80 percent of all those surveyed attend a "Gymnasium" high school and are aged between 14 and 18.

In the survey, the school pupils rated their own knowledge of coronavirus as comparatively good. At the same time, they rated the knowledge of their classmates significantly worse. In addition, the interviewees thought their parents knew more about the virus than their teachers did.

Half of the school pupils stated that they had been vaccinated three times already at the time of the survey. Seventeen percent were unvaccinated. The two groups differed with regard to their fear of being infected with coronavirus: while 55 percent of the unvaccinated stated that they were not at all afraid of an infection, among those who had been vaccinated three times it was just over a quarter.

Generally, 48 percent of all those surveyed felt that they had been severely or very severely negatively affected by the corona pandemic. Twenty-two percent stated that they felt that they had not been negatively affected or only a little. Among the protective measures carried out in schools, there was clear support for mandatory testing, with it being accepted by 88 percent of school pupils.

In general, the majority of school pupils think the protective measures implemented in Germany were capable of bringing the health consequences of the pandemic under control; 25 percent rejected this view. Similarly, more than half of those surveyed disagreed with the statement that every individual should decide on how to respond to coronavirus for themselves and not politicians, while around 20 percent agreed or tended to agree with this statement.

To download the full study