Personal versus impersonal methods for recruiting blood donations

Identifying blood donors willing to help with recruitment

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES

Social influence shapes behaviour and donors are ambassadors for blood banks. Donors are role models for family and friends and, therefore, so may be able to help with donor recruitment.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

A questionnaire was used to assess donors' willingness to engage in donor recruitment. Measures included willingness to recruit new donors and antecedents of recruitment motivation based on the theory of planned behaviour (TPB).

RESULTS

More than half of our participants were willing to try to recruit friends and family (57%). Self-efficacy was the most important correlate of intention to recruit as were cognitive attitude and experience with the blood bank. The findings suggest that the TPB provides a good basis for understanding cognitive antecedents of donors' willingness to recruit other donors.

CONCLUSION

Results suggest that using existing donors to recruit new donors could be an efficient and cost-effective way to recruit additional donors. This approach warrants further investigation.

Eliciting repeat blood donations: tell early career donors why their blood type is special and more will give again

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES

This study was designed to investigate whether sending a personalized and informative letter to early career donors would increase the number returning to donate again, as the literature suggests that it is at around the third donation that people become career donors.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Experimental participants were sent a recruitment letter that included information about their own blood type and the percentage of the general population with the same blood type who donated. Control participants received a recruitment letter with some general information. The aim of the study was to determine whether more participants in the experimental group, compared with the control group, would donate blood within a 4-week period after receiving their personalized recruitment letter.

RESULTS

Donors in the experimental group were 43% more likely to return to donate than those in the control group [chi(2) (1) = 5.79, P < 0.016].

CONCLUSIONS

Sending out personalized, informative letters appears to be a potentially powerful donor-retention tool.

Motivations to donate blood: demographic comparisons

BACKGROUND

Understanding blood donor motivations is crucial to improving effectiveness of donor recruitment and retention programs.

STUDY DESIGN AND METHODS

Data from a 1998 survey of 92,581 U.S. blood donors were used to evaluate factors influencing the decision to donate in various demographic groups. Data were weighted to adjust for response and sample design.

RESULTS

Of 52,650 respondents, 45,588 gave whole-blood (WB) donations. Among all demographic groups, the major reasons to donate were altruism (75-87%) and awareness of the need for blood (34-43%). Except for first-time donors and those <or=25 years old, blood drive organizers and/or recruiters were more important than family and/or peers in encouraging donors (13-19% vs. 1-8%). Although 59 to 63 percent of donors said they would be encouraged to donate by reminders originating from the blood bank, for some, the contact would have a negative effect and discourage donation. Discouragement would be higher if they were reminded by a telephone call (14%) rather than by a letter or e-mail (4%) or an appeal (2%) from the blood bank.

CONCLUSION

WB donations appear to be made primarily for altruistic reasons and in response to appeals for blood. Ways to build on this humanitarianism and take advantage of new communication routes, such as e-mail, need to be developed.

Behavioral approaches in increasing blood donations

In the United States, as well as other countries, there is a constant and pressing need for increasing the number of people who donate blood. Medical procedures require donated blood, and when shortages occur in different regions, the lives of numerous patients are endangered. Behavioral strategies, which include use of incentives, competition, and raffles, and the like, might be effective methods for motivating individuals to donate blood. This study examined the use of a variety of these types of strategies used by workers at United Blood Services. Organizations that had employed behavioral strategies were compared with other organizations that had not used these approaches. Significantly higher rates of donations were obtained in organizations that had used behavioral strategies. The implications of these findings are discussed.

The effects of a personal phone call prompt on blood donor commitment

There is a need to investigate procedures that can motivate individuals to attend blood drives. Low rates of attendance are partly due to the failure of many to fulfill their pledges to donate blood. This study examined the use of personal phone calls to prompt college-age blood donors to fulfill their commitments. The results indicated that a remainder call was effective in prompting pledged donors to attend a college drive. The phone call prompt might have been effective because of the social pressure which the recruiter exerted on the donors. Implications of these findings for blood donor recruitment efforts as well as the field of community psychology are discussed.