Communicating about gifts of life: the effect of knowledge,attitudes, and altruism on behavior and behavioral intentions regarding organ donation

Much of the limited literature on organ donation has focused on the demographic and psychographic profiles of people who are willing to become organ donors. More information about the relationship of attitudes, values, knowledge, and actual behavior among adults is needed if targeted communication campaigns promoting organ donation are to succeed. The results of a mail survey of 798 adults sampled (via stratified random sampling procedures) from two local sites of a national corporation suggest that attitudes toward donation, knowledge about organ donation, altruism, and perceived social norms are significantly associated with both actual behavior (having signed an organ donor card) and behavioral intent (among non-donors) to sign a card in the future. These findings support the major models of organ donation willingness, especially those advanced by Horton and Horton (1991) and Kopfman (1994). This study also advances current knowledge of organ donation willingness by 1) using a large, relatively diverse population of adults rather than relying on a student sample; and 2) focusing on specific knowledge barriers that distinguish donors from non-donors.     

The Effectiveness of High- and Low-Intensity Worksite Campaigns to Promote Organ Donation: The Workplace Partnership for Life

This study describes a worksite project designed to promote organ donation while testing the effectiveness of low-intensity (media-only) campaigns compared to high intensity campaigns (media+interpersonal communication), which incorporated on-site visits. All campaigns lasted 10 weeks. A total of 45 companies participated in the project, 15 in each quasi-experimental condition. Companies were counterbalanced by size of organization and industry type. Compared to the control condition, high-intensity worksite campaigns led to a six-percentage point increase in signed donor registrations while low-intensity campaigns led to a three-percentage-point increase. Both forms of worksite campaigns led to increases in attitudes, knowledge and perceived subjective norms from pretest to posttest when compared to control sites. At the same time, worksite campaigns served to significantly reduce individual-level barriers shown to be related to donation, such as medical mistrust and desire to maintain bodily integrity.     

Meta-analytic evidence for the persuasive effect of narratives on beliefs,attitudes, intentions,and behaviors

Although narratives are often credited with the capacity to change opinions, empirical tests of this prediction have produced mixed results. To provide a more precise test of narrative's effect on beliefs, attitudes, intentions, and behaviors, we performed meta-analyses on studies that evaluated narrative's persuasive influence on these outcomes. Results suggested positive relationships between exposure to a narrative and narrative-consistent beliefs (k?=?37; N?=?7,376; r?=?.17), attitudes (k?=?40; N?=?7,132; r?=?.19), intentions (k?=?28; N?=?5,211; r?=?.17), and behaviors (k?=?5; N?=?978; r?=?.23). Moderator analyses on the effect of fictionality yielded mixed results. Neither medium of presentation nor research design influenced the magnitude of the narrative-persuasion relationship. However, results suggested the presence of unidentified moderators.     

Family Ties: Communicating Identity Through Jointly Told Family Stories This paper is based on the author's dissertation study and was presented on the Top Four Panel of the Family Communication Division at the National Communication Association Convention,November 2003, Miami,FL.

Family stories work to construct family identity. Little research, however, has examined storytelling in families. This study examined storytelling content and process to assess the extent to which families jointly integrated or fragmented a shared sense of identity and how these discursive practices relate to family qualities. Results of a study involving 58 family triads indicate relationships between story theme (e.g., accomplishment vs. stress), person referencing practices (e.g., we-ness vs. separateness), and interactional storytelling behaviors (e.g., engagement, turn-taking). Moreover, story framing, perspective-taking, statements about selves-in-the-family, and identifying as a “storytelling family” emerged consistently as positive predictors of family satisfaction and functioning. The results offer a portrait of how families communicate identity and functioning in joint storytelling interactions and further position storytelling as a communication phenomenon worthy of consideration.     

Reversing the byline hierarchy: The effect of equalizing bias on the accreditation of primary,secondary and senior authors

Equalizing bias (EqB) is a systematic inaccuracy which arises when authorship credit is divided equally among coauthors who have not contributed equally. As the number of coauthors increases, the diminishing amount of credit allocated to each additional coauthor is increasingly composed of equalizing bias such that when the total number of coauthors exceeds 12, the credit score of most coauthors is composed mostly of EqB. In general, EqB reverses the byline hierarchy and skews bibliometric assessments by underestimating the contribution of primary authors, i.e. those adversely affected by negative EqB, and overestimating the contribution of secondary authors, those benefitting from positive EqB. The positive and negative effects of EqB are balanced and sum to zero, but are not symmetrical. The lack of symmetry exacerbates the relative effects of EqB, and explains why primary authors are increasingly outnumbered by secondary authors as the number of coauthors increases. Specifically, for a paper with 50 coauthors, the benefit of positive EqB goes to 39 secondary authors while the burden of negative EqB befalls 11 primary authors. Relative to harmonic estimates of their actual contribution, the EqB of the 50 coauthors ranged from <−90% to >350%. Senior authorship, when it occurs, is conventionally indicated by a corresponding last author and recognized as being on a par with a first author. If senior authorship is not recognized, then the credit lost by an unrecognized senior author is distributed among the other coauthors as part of their EqB. The powerful distortional effect of EqB is compounded in bibliometric indices and performance rankings derived from biased equal credit. Equalizing bias must therefore be corrected at the source by ensuring accurate accreditation of all coauthors prior to the calculation of aggregate publication metrics.     

Usage of electronic journals and their effect on interlibrary loan: A case study at the University of Nevada, Reno

As libraries increase their electronic journal collections, would dependence on interlibrary loan decrease? This paper reports a case study at the University of Nevada, Reno, University Libraries (UNR) focusing on the usage of the Elsevier online journal package and interlibrary loan (ILL) borrowing activities. It analyzes four-years' worth of UNR usage and ILL statistics, gathered between July 1999 and June 2003. It also provides observations and explanations from a perspective beyond statistics, at the level of library services and the campus demographic and research environments.