Motivations, Intentions, and Beliefs among Active and Non-Active Blood Donors

The aging baby boomer blood donor base, coupled with decreases from younger age groups, is an ongoing public health concern and impacts all people in need of blood transfusions regardless of gender, age, racial, or ethnic backgrounds. Results from a large, cross-sectional 2016 National Health Interview Survey study in the U.S., the 18-24 age group yielded the lowest percentage of past-year blood donations, with blood donations from males being more common than from females. There is an urgent need to successfully recruit a younger generation of sustainable blood donors to complement and eventually replace the aging WWII and baby boomer generations (ages 60+) of donors. The objective of this research is to learn motivations, intentions, and beliefs among active blood donors towards donating blood in the 18-39 age group. A Qualtrics survey, which includes ten Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) 7-point Likert scale questions among four constructs (Attitudes, Subjective Norms, Perceived Behavioral Control, and Intention), was administered electronically to active blood donors in a database from MEDIC, a large, regional blood center. Results include an overall computation of Cronbach’s , which indicates a good level of inter-reliability; that is, how closely related a set of items are within each construct. We also developed a regression model to predict donors’ intentions to donate blood based on several predictor variables, such as demographic factors, when they first donated blood, how often they donate blood, etc