Stories of Hope and Ethnic Identification: A Look at Organ Donation Communication

• Main Author: Kavlie, Justin
• Format: Others
• Published: North Dakota State University 2018
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10365/28658

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of ethnic identification and ethnic portrayals in organ donation stories on the attitudes towards organ donation, the intent to register to become an organ donor, and the intent to discuss organ donation with friends and family. An online experiment was conducted where 202 undergraduate participants viewed one of three randomly selected ethnic portrayal conditions: African-American, Caucasian, and Hispanic. Following data collection, the participants were split along the median into high and low ethnic identification for the analysis. There were no significant interaction effects found between ethnic identification and the different ethnic portrayal in the message or significant effects of the ethnic portrayal on the dependent variables. There was a significant effect found on the impact of ethnic identification on attitudes towards organ donation.