Designing and testing an ethnic-ancestry question for Australian blood donors: Acceptability, feasibility, and understanding.

Abstract

ObjectivesWe aimed to evaluate the acceptability, feasibility, and understanding of a donor ethnic‐ancestry question with Australian blood donors.BackgroundEthnic‐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/MaterialsA 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.ResultsDonors 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.ConclusionThe 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.