Joseph R. Ferrari

The effects of a personal phone call prompt on blood donor commitment.

There is a need to investigate procedures that can motivate individuals to attend blood drives. Low rates of attendance are partly due to the failure of many to fulfill their pledges to donate blood. This study examined the use of personal phone calls to prompt college-age blood donors to fulfill their commitments. The results indicated that a remainder call was effective in prompting pledged donors to attend a college drive. The phone call prompt might have been effective because of the social pressure which the recruiter exerted on the donors. Implications of these findings for blood donor recruitment efforts as well as the field of community psychology are discussed.

AN EXAMINATION OF THE NEW YORK MANDATORY SEAT BELT LAW ON A UNIVERSITY CAMPUS

On January 1, 1985, the mandatory seat belt law went into effect in New York State; violators were now subject to a fine of

The Use of Incentives to Increase Blood Donations

50.00. Police officers issued nonpenalty-based warnings during the month prior to the laws imposition. The purpose of the present study was to compare the effects of the warning versus the fine and a fine-plus-prompt condition (the prompt delivered by the experimenters) on seat belt use on a university campus. Results indicated that significantly more drivers used their sear belts during the fine conditions as compared with the warning condition and that significantly more female drivers used their seat belt during all conditions. A significant difference was not found, however, between the fine and fine-plus-prompt conditions.