Nr. 2 - 2. Quartal 1998

Attitude Measures, Personality Traits and the Role of Persuasion in Organ Donation

B. Baluch, G. Randhawa

In spite of reported surveys on the general public's strong willingness to donate organs, there is currently a significant shortage of available organs for transplantation. It is therefore of prime importance to identify factors contributing to the gap between people's willingness and behaviour towards donating organ(s). The present paper aimed to explore three such factors:

Firstly, a possible relationship was explored between people's rating of their attitudes towards donating organs using a Likert-type scale and their actual behaviour in signing an organ donor card. No such relationship was found, thus suggesting that what people may say to Likert-type of attitude measures may be different from their actual behaviour.

Secondly, it was found that people who most likely will say no to signing an organ donor card, also scored high on psychoticism and neuroticism personality test scores. This suggested that perhaps there are some prime personality traits that may act in an all-or-none manner indicating whether or not a person may sign an organ donor card.

Thirdly, it was found that "persuasion" in the form of short (written or verbal) presentation of information has no effect on people's willingness to sign an organ donor card. More than 75% refused to sign the card regardless of persuasion to do so.

The general findings thus indicate: that Likert-type attitude measures should not be taken as true behaviour of people's actions towards organ donation; that there may be some fundamental personality factors affecting organ donation; that if persuasion were to work there is a need for more fundamental interventions, perhaps dating back to early school days.

Keywords:

Transplantation, willingness to donate organs, psychoticism, neuroticism

Kurztitel:

Baluch, B. (1998) TxMed 2:102

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