Evaluation of Factors Affecting Blood Donation Among Continuous and NonContinuous Donors, Using the Theory of Planned Behavior in Ilam Province, Iran

Factors affecting blood donation play an important role in attracting safe and continuous blood donors. The current study aimed at determining the factors affecting blood donation through comparing 2 groups of continuous and non-continuous blood donors, using the theory of planned behavior.
The current descriptive, analytical study was carried out in 2015 in Ilam, Iran. The population contained 234 blood donors recruited by the quota sampling method. The data were collected by the theory of planned behavior questionnaire (TPB questionnaire) developed by Hasanzade et al., which its validity and reliability were evaluated and confirmed in previous studies. Data were analyzed with SPSS version 16, using the Spearman correlation and the Mann-Whitney U tests.
Among continuous and non-continuous blood donors, 54.4% and 50.8% had higher education, 35.1% and 45.8% had job, 99.3% and 88.3% were male, 80.7% and 75.8% were married, and 66.8% and 61.7% were in the age range of 30 - 50 years, respectively. Results also indicated that attitudes (score = 0.28), facilitating factors (score = 0.28), and self-efficacy (score = 0.27) were the most important factors affecting blood donation in the continuous donors group, while attitudes (score = 0.27) and facilitating factors (score = 0.20) were the most important ones in the non-continuous blood donors.
In the current study, attitudes and facilitating factors were the predictive factors of donation behavior. It is proposed to design intervention programs and launch educational campaigns to attract long-term donors in order to improve the attitudes toward blood donation and encourage and attract donors to increase and retain both the continuous and non-continuous donors.