An exploratory survey to develop a questionnaire on social-psychological aspects of stem cell phenomenon

Stem cells (SC) are among the most promising research venues in medicine. They are also studied in social sciences (e.g., Nielsen et al., 2009), but the literature is fragmented and generally lacks standard tools. This paper has three aims: investigating SC social representation; presenting a first validation of some SC-relevant social-psychological constructs’ scales; comparing the two main SC donation techniques as for their relation with some social-psychological variables. Scales for the following SC-related variables were employed: subjective and objective knowledge, sources of information, attitudes, previous behaviors, motivations and deterrents, behavioral intentions, norms, satisfaction with information, perceived environmental impact of SC. Schwartz's PVQ (Schwartz et al., 2001) and PANAS (Watson et al., 1988) were also included. 78 Italian valid subjects answered a questionnaire with these scales. Some scales were adapted from existing tools found in the literature, other scales were created ex novo from literature analysis. Each scale's factorial structure (via exploratory PCA and Cronbach's alpha) and correlations between donation intentions and other variables were explored. Results show that the SC’ social representation focuses on some general medical concepts and the specific concept of umbilical cord blood SC donation. Most of the scales have been found to have a satisfactory factorial structure and internal consistency (α>.60). As for comparing the two kinds of donation, correlational analyses highlight some interesting relations, e.g. descriptive norms seem to have a positive moderate correlation (r=.40 p<.001) only to bone marrow SC donation, while umbilical cord blood donation is more related to affective reactance (r=-.26 p>.05). Results are discussed according to the literature and directions for tools development and future research are suggested. Authors acknowledge Prof. Marino Bonaiuto for this contribution's research programme