This study has used qualitative methods to determine if aspects of theories of risk and decision-making can help to explain parents' decisions about immunising their children. Traditionally qualitative research has been associated with the generation, rather than the testing, of hypotheses, however, this denies a major strength of qualitative research which is to examine theories in the light of data. As such it is a method suited to producing understanding and to generating solutions to problems [34] . We believe this method, therefore, is appropriate to provide a greater understanding of complexities of decision making and perceptions of disease and vaccines and a depth of information not available from large scale quantitatively based surveys. The benefits of using the qualitative method described in this study is the large quantity of detailed information it provides, however, using a small non-randomly selected sample can present problems in determining the generalisabilty of the ensuing information. The results of this study confirm, complement and extend the findings of other studies in this area [4, 5, 36, 37] .