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Designing and testing an ethnic-ancestry question for Australian blood donors: Acceptability, feasibility, and
Luke Gahan1,2, Carley N Gemelli2, Sarah P Kruse2
1School of Social Sciences and Humanities, La Trobe University, Melbourne.
Objectives:
We aimed to evaluate the acceptability, feasibility, and understanding of a donor ethnic-ancestry question with Australian blood donors.
Background:
Ethnic-ancestry assists blood collection agencies to meet the demand for rare blood-types. However, there is no standard ethnicity question used by health/blood services around the world and we do not know how blood donors in Australia will respond to being asked for this information.
Methods/Materials:
A survey and ethnic-ancestry question was administered to a sample of donors (n = 506) to evaluate their views on being asked for their ethnic-ancestry, test a comprehensive ethnic-ancestry list, and determine the level of information required by donors.
Results:
Donors reported being very comfortable providing their ethnic-ancestry and the majority of donors found an ethnic-ancestry option they were happy with (91.3%). Overall donors reported a high level of understanding of why ethnic-ancestry was important to blood donation. However, when provided more information on why ethnic-ancestry is required, donors reported increased understanding.
Conclusion:
The findings from this study demonstrated that it is acceptable and feasible to introduce a comprehensive ethnic-ancestry question for Australian blood donors. We also found that a greater understanding is achieved when a more comprehensive explanation for inclusion of the question is provided.
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