title: Motivating factors and deterrents for blood donation among donors at a university campus-based collection center.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Insight into motivating factors and barriers for blood donation, especially for young people and underrepresented minorities, is important to donor recruitment and retention. We surveyed donors at a new blood collection facility based on a large, ethnically diverse university campus.
  
  
  METHODS
  Individuals who had donated or attempted to donate at the facility during the first 17 months of its operation were invited by e-mail to respond to an anonymous, Web-based questionnaire. Respondents were asked to provide demographic characteristics, rate the importance of various motivating and deterring factors for blood donation, and indicate how they prefer to be contacted by the blood center.
  
  
  RESULTS
  More than 30% of the 1619 invitees responded, 95.6% (n = 479) of whom gave complete responses. The respondents were ethnically diverse, and 79.1% were between 18 and 28 years of age. Altruism was by far the most important motivating factor for donation. However, incentives were also rated as important or very important by 72.2% of the respondents. Inconvenience due to time or location constraints was the most important deterrent. E-mailing was the most preferred contact method and chosen by 80.3% of those surveyed. Some differences were noted in the responses from members of different age, sex, and ethnic groups.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Although overall altruism and inconvenience were the major motivating factor and deterrent for blood, some demographic differences existed in donor attitude toward incentive programs and preference for the method of contact used by blood centers for recruitment purposes.
authors.affiliation: Division of Transfusion Medicine, Department of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, 10833 Le Conte Avenue, Los Angeles, California 90095, USA. syuan@mednet.ucla.edu
authors.forename: Shan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Yuan
authors.forename: Matthew
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Hoffman
authors.forename: Qun
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Lu
authors.forename: Dennis
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Goldfinger
authors.forename: Alyssa
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Ziman
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000533:Altruism; D001782:Blood Donors / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009042:Motivation; D014495:Universities