Attitudes and willingness to donate biological samples for research among potential donors in the Italian Twin Register.
Most ethical and social research is focused on disease-oriented biobanks, while healthy donors' motivation toward population biobanking is scarcely explored. We investigated willingness to donate biological samples for research and attitudes toward donation by a mail survey among 4,894 twins enrolled in the population-based Italian Twin Register. We compared responses in different socio-demographic categories and estimated, by the twin design, environmental and genetic components of this attitude. More than 80% of respondents expressed willingness to donate. A prevailing collaborative attitude to donation emerged. Attitude was mainly influenced by individual social and cultural factors. Education was important in shaping motivation and willingness to donate. Future surveys of the general population are desirable to continue investigating attitude toward donation and concerns about biobanking.
Istituto Superiore di Sanità, Rome, Italy virgilia.toccaceli@iss.it.
Virgilia
V
Toccaceli
Istituto Superiore di Sanità, Rome, Italy.
Corrado
C
Fagnani
Istituto Superiore di Sanità, Rome, Italy.
Antonella
A
Gigantesco
Istituto Superiore di Sanità, Rome, Italy.
Sonia
S
Brescianini
Istituto Superiore di Sanità, Rome, Italy.
Cristina
C
D'Ippolito
Istituto Superiore di Sanità, Rome, Italy.
Maria Antonietta
MA
Stazi
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000533:Altruism; D001290:Attitude; D026686:Beneficence; D018070:Biological Specimen Banks; D035843:Biomedical Research; D003299:Cooperative Behavior; D003469:Culture; D006801:Humans; D007258:Informed Consent; D007558:Italy; D008875:Middle Aged; D009042:Motivation; D018579:Patient Selection; D010551:Personality / Q000235:genetics; D012016:Reference Values; D012919:Social Behavior; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014019:Tissue Donors / Q000941:ethics; D009927:Tissue and Organ Procurement / Q000941:ethics; D014427:Twins; D055815:Young Adult
attitude to donation; biological samples; cross-sectional survey; ethics; genetic epidemiology; population biobanking; twin study; willingness to donation