2005 National Survey of Organ and Tissue Donation Attitudes and Behaviors

2.0 Survey Methods

In the summer and fall of 2005, Gallup completed nearly 2,500 interviews with people in U.S. households. Random digit dialing was used to identify adults aged 18 and older. Telephone exchanges were sampled in U.S. households and were oversampled in geographic areas with concentrations of racial and ethnic minorities. This sampling approach divided the United States into the following strata:

Black or African American oversample
Hispanic or Latino oversample
Asian oversample
Remainder of the United States

Interviewing was done in Spanish and Mandarin for those who preferred either language to English. Professional interviewers called in the afternoons and evenings, and on weekdays and weekends to try to find individuals at home at the sampled numbers. Interviewers made up to seven calls to make a contact and screen individuals in the household for eligibility. Interviewers also made up to seven calls to complete the interviews.

The questionnaire is found in Appendix A. The topics covered included the following:

• General support for donation
• Granting permission to donate
• Willingness to donate
• Support for living organ donation
• Attitudes toward presumed consent
• Attitudes toward financial incentives
• Attitudinal drivers of organ donation
• Sources of information about organ donation

The sample was weighted to adjust for the racial and ethnic oversampling, number of residential telephone numbers in the household, and number of adults living in the household. The sample was further weighted to meet the sex and race/ethnicity distribution of the United States. These weights were applied to all analyses in this report.

Table 1 shows the weighted and unweighted distribution of demographic variables. The variables included gender, age, race/ethnicity, and education. The table clearly illustrates the oversampling of Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians and how their numbers are discounted somewhat in the weighting to provide a balanced estimate when race/ethnic categories are combined.

Table 1. Sample Characteristics: Unweighted and Weighted

Some of the items used in the survey questionnaire for this study are proprietary content owned by The Gallup Organization. A complete list is found on the Copyright page. Copyright © 1993, 2005 The Gallup Organization, Washington, D.C. All rights reserved.