Helping Unrelated Strangers: Physical and Psychological Reactions to the Bone Marrow Donation Process Among Anonymous Donors1

The development of models that predict outcomes of voluntary action is important for practitioners who manage large groups of volunteers. In accordance with this goal, a path model was generated linking predonation characteristics of volunteer marrow donors to postdonation physical and psychological reactions. Questionnaire data were collected from 343 individuals registered to donate marrow to unrelated strangers at 3 time points: shortly predonation, shortly postdonation, and 1-year post- donation. Although donors had generally positive reactions to donation, a substantial minority reported ambivalence about donating, physical difficulty with donation, and negative psychological reactions postdonation. In addition, our data suggest that predonation ambivalence is a central predictor of postdonation reactions, even after other donor characteristics are taken into account. These results have practical implications for the recruitment of volunteers, and suggest important variables to be considered in evaluating potential bone marrow donors.     

Cognitive changes associated with social skills training

Changes in locus of control and self-esteem during social skills training and at 6 month follow-up were investigated. Forty-four adolescent, male offenders were randomly assigned to a social skills training, attention-placebo, or no-treatment control procedure. The results showed that pre- to post-training increases in self-esteem were produced for both the social skills training and attention-placebo control groups, but not for the no-treatment control group. These increases did not continue during the follow-up phase; the social skills training group, which showed the greatest improvement during training, displayed a decrease in self- esteem during follow-up.The locus of control measures showed a statistically significant shift towards internality for the social skills training group during training, which was not found for the attention-placebo and no-treatment controls. During the follow-up phase, all three groups showed a statistically significant shift towards externality, suggesting a tendency for boys to view their behaviour and consequences as being under the control of chance factors or powerful others, during institutionalization. This effect was partly reversed during training for the social skills training group, but the effect was not long lasting. It seems therefore that social skills training is effective in producing an increase in self-esteem and a shift towards internal locus of control. These changes are, however, of short duration and the self-esteem shift may be the result of increased staff contact or other non-specific therapy factors.