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The effects of a personal phone call prompt on blood donor commitment
Insights
A simple reminder phone call effectively encouraged college students to donate blood after they made a pledge. This intervention may leverage social pressure to improve blood drive attendance.
Area of Science:
- Community Psychology
- Health Behavior Interventions
Background:
- Low attendance rates at blood drives are a significant challenge.
- Many individuals fail to fulfill their pledges to donate blood.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate methods for motivating individuals to attend blood drives.
- To examine the effectiveness of personal phone calls in prompting college-age donors to fulfill donation commitments.
Main Methods:
- A study was conducted involving college-age blood donors.
- Personal phone calls were used as a reminder prompt to encourage attendance at a blood drive.
Main Results:
- A reminder phone call was found to be effective in prompting pledged donors to attend a college blood drive.
- The effectiveness of the phone call may be attributed to social pressure exerted by the recruiter.
Conclusions:
- Personalized reminder calls can be a successful strategy for increasing blood drive attendance among pledged donors.
- Findings have implications for blood donor recruitment and community psychology practices.
Abstract:
There is a need to investigate procedures that can motivate individuals to attend blood drives. Low rates of attendance are partly due to the failure of many to fulfill their pledges to donate blood. This study examined the use of personal phone calls to prompt college-age blood donors to fulfill their commitments. The results indicated that a remainder call was effective in prompting pledged donors to attend a college drive. The phone call prompt might have been effective because of the social pressure which the recruiter exerted on the donors. Implications of these findings for blood donor recruitment efforts as well as the field of community psychology are discussed.