Risk-behavior reporting by blood donors with an automated telephone system

Donor risk-behavior assessment is important for blood safety. Few evaluations of automated telephone systems for eliciting risk exposure among voluntary blood donors have been reported.

A modified risk-behavior questionnaire was presented after donation via an automated telephone polling system to 805 of 15,092 Hong Kong Chinese voluntary blood donors. Risk-behavior rates were compared to those of all other donors (14,287) simultaneously completing the questionnaire in a pencil-and-paper format.

The telephone group included proportionally more women (46.3% vs. 44.9%), previous donors (93.3% vs. 83.6%), and sexually inactive donors (66.5% vs. 71.2%) with lower educational achievement (60.7% vs. 54.5%). The telephone group demonstrated fewer missing data (mean 1.3%, range 0.4%-3.1% vs. mean 9.8%, range 8.0%-14.2%) and more complete demographic detailing, probably accounting for the demographic differences. The telephone group reported higher prevalence rates of needle or syringe sharing (1.5% vs. 0.3%), homosexual and/or bisexual intercourse (4.1% vs. 1.3%), knowing or suspecting that partner had intercourse with another during past year (12.4% vs. 8.5%), and future intention to use blood donation as a means to test for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV; 19.1% vs. 13.7%). There was no difference in knowledge of the HIV window period or proportions visiting or using condoms with commercial sex workers between telephone and pencil-and-paper groups.

This survey with automated telephone screening of potential blood donors revealed increased reporting of risk exposure relative to commonly used paper-and-pencil methods. This raises questions of possible underreporting of risk among blood donors screened by paper questionnaire and perhaps face-to-face interview.