Inconvenience is a major barrier to donating, suggesting that mobile collections and increased hours of operation might help recapture lapsed donors. The finding that lapsed minority donors were more likely to give bad treatment and poor staff skills as important reasons to not donate is disconcerting in light of the changing donor demographics and increased efforts to recruit these donors.

Strategies aimed at encouraging current donors to donate more frequently during the first year may help to establish a regular donation behaviour.

Intermittent low-level HCV viremia can occur as much as 2 months before the periods of exponential increase in viral load and the high-titer plateau-phase viremia that usually precede seroconversion. Animal inoculation studies are in progress to evaluate if transfusion of low-level viremic plasma can transmit HCV infection.

for the Retrovirus Epidemiology Donor StudyBACKGROUND: Blood donation can be described as a prosocial behavior, and donors often cite prosocial reasons such as altruism, empathy, or social responsibility for their willingness to donate. Previous studies have not quantitatively evaluated these characteristics in donors or examined how they relate to donation frequency. STUDY DESIGN AND METHODS: As part of a donor motivation study, 12,064 current and lapsed donors answered questions used to create an altruistic behavior, empathetic concern, and social responsibility motivation score for each donor. Analysis of variance was used to compare mean scores by demographics and donor status and to determine the influence of each variable on the mean number of donations in the past 5 years. RESULTS:The mean score for each prosocial characteristic appeared high, with lower scores in male and younger donors. Higher altruistic behavior and social responsibility motivation scores were associated with increased past donation frequency, but the effects were minor. Empathetic concern was not associated with prior donation. The largest differences in prior donations were by age and donor status, with older and current donors having given more frequently. CONCLUSION: Most blood donors appear to have high levels of the primary prosocial characteristics (altruism, empathy, and social responsibility) commonly thought to be the main motivators for donation, but these factors do not appear to be the ones most strongly related to donation frequency. Traditional donor appeals based on these characteristics may need to be supplemented by approaches that address practical concerns like convenience, community safety, or personal benefit.T o meet the demand for blood in the United States, there is an ongoing need to recruit new and retain current blood donors. [1][2][3][4] Because only a small proportion of eligible donors donate 5,6 and an even smaller percentage return to give blood a second time, 4,7,8 a better understanding of what motivates donors to give blood is needed. 9-14Maintaining an adequate blood supply depends on people giving blood, a behavior that can truly be described as prosocial. 15 Prosocial behaviors are acts that most people in society or in a social group generally consider to be beneficial to others. 16,17 Explanations as to why people sometimes act primarily to benefit others rather than themselves are numerous and often conflicting. 16,[18][19][20][21] One theory is that people who are more likely to perform prosocial behaviors may be more likely to have what can be characterized as a "prosocial personality." 17,22 ABBREVIATIONS: PSB = Prosocial Personality Battery; REDS = Retrovirus Epidemiology Donor Study; SRA = SelfReport Altruism. A key characteristic of the prosocial personality is the desire to perform and the performance of altruistically motivated behaviors. 16 Conventional wisdom holds that giving blood is motivated by altruism. Numerous studies on donor motivations have found that donors report altruisti...