Evaluating Attitudes Towards Organ Donation in the United States on MTurk

Evaluating Attitudes Towards Organ Donation

The study is conducted to investigate the effects of priming different cultural orientations on participants' decisions on whether to donate their organs, in an opt-out donation system scenario where the default is a presumed consent on the part of the individual.

Study Overview

• Status: Completed
• Conditions: Individual Difference
• Intervention / Treatment: Behavioral: Online Individualistic Prime (statement writing); Behavioral: Online Collectivistic Prime (statement writing)

Detailed Description

Participants complete a survey where they respond to scales measuring their baseline cultural and power distance orientations, and answer questions on their demographics such as gender, race, employment etc.

24 hours later, participants fill in a 2nd survey where they are instructed to complete 1 out of 2 possible priming tasks. The possible tasks consist of an Individualistic priming condition and a Collectivistic priming condition; both tasks require participants to answer 3 statements each to 3 questions regarding the self or their social group. Participants then indicate their choice on whether to donate their organs (default or opt-out), rate their confidence regarding their choice and complete the same scales measuring their cultural and power distance orientations.

• Study Type: Interventional
• Enrollment (Actual): 211
• Phase: Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

Study Locations

• Singapore
  • Singapore, Singapore, 138527
    • Yale-NUS College

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: 21 years and older (Adult, Older Adult)
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: No
• Genders Eligible for Study: All

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

• Aged 21 and above
• Lives in the United States of America

Exclusion Criteria:

• Below age 21
• Does not live in the United States of America

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

Design Details

• Primary Purpose: Health Services Research
• Allocation: Randomized
• Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
• Masking: Single

Number of Arms

2

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm	Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: Individualistic; Participants write 3 statements to 3 questions relating to his/her differences from his/her immediate community	Behavioral: Online Individualistic Prime (statement writing); Participants write 3 statements each about (1) themselves, (2) why they are not like others, and (3) why it is beneficial to stand out from others
Experimental: Collectivistic; Participants write 3 statements to 3 questions relating to his/her similarities with his/her immediate community	Behavioral: Online Collectivistic Prime (statement writing); Participants think about a social group and write 3 statements each about (1) their social group, (2) why they are like others, and (3) why it is beneficial to blend in with others

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Binary survey item - Decision to Donate Organ	From a scenario where participants imagine themselves applying for a driver's license in a country where an opt-out organ donation system is enforced, participants are asked to make a binary choice between choosing to donate their organs (default) and choosing not to donate their organs (opt out).	1 minute
Line scale survey item - Confidence in Decision to Donate Organ	Participants are asked to mark along a line scale on how confident they feel about their decision to donate their organs. The extreme ends of the line scale are defined as "Not Confident At All" (0) and "Extremely Confident" (100).	1 minute

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Individual levels of individualism & collectivism	Individualism and collectivism levels will be measured by Triandis & Gelfand (1998)'s "Culture Orientation Scale". This is a 16-item scale designed to measure: 1) Vertical Collectivism (VC) - seeing the self as a part of a collective and accepting hierarchy and inequality within that collective; 2) Vertical Individualism (VI) - seeing the self as fully autonomous, but recognizing and accepting the existence of inequality; 3) Horizontal Collectivism (HC) - seeing the self as part of a collective but viewing all the members of that collective as equal counterparts; and 4) Horizontal Individualism (HI) - seeing the self as fully autonomous, and believing in equality amongst individuals. All items are answered on a 5-point scale, ranging from 1 = strongly disagree & 5 = strongly agree. Each dimension's items are summed up separately to create a VC, VI, HC, and HI score to reflect the level of collectivism and individualism in the sampled group.	5 minutes
Individual levels of power distance	Individualism and collectivism levels will be measured by a 5-item scale used by Hanzaee and Dehkordi (2011) to measure Power Distance, defined as "the extent to which the less powerful members of institutions and organizations within a country expect and accept that power is distributed unequally" (Hofstede and Hofstede, 2005) All items are answered on a 5-point scale, ranging from 1 = strongly disagree & 5 = strongly agree. All items are summed up to create an average score to reflect the level of power distance orientation in the sampled group.	3 minutes

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: Yale-NUS College

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start (Actual): February 16, 2020
• Primary Completion (Actual): February 28, 2020
• Study Completion (Actual): February 28, 2020

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: March 11, 2020
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: March 11, 2020
• First Posted (Actual): March 16, 2020

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (Actual): March 16, 2020
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: March 11, 2020
• Last Verified: March 1, 2020

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Keywords: Culture; Organ Donation
• Other Study ID Numbers: HSS-1502-P02-07

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

• Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?: Undecided

Drug and device information, study documents

• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product: No
• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product: No