‘Be the match’. Predictors of decisions concerning registration in potential bone marrow donor registry in a group of Polish young adults as an example of prosocial behaviour

Most of the studies about donation decisions focus on some personality factors, self-esteem or some family characteristics as separate sources of influence and do not take into account interdependence of these variables. The study attempts to conceptualize and validate an integrative framework, based on SCT A. Bandura, incorporating personal, environmental and behavioural determinants of the decision to register as a potential bone marrow donor. The study hypothesizes and tests the interdependent variables model of personality traits, self-esteem, practical past prosocial behaviours and family functionality as the key determinants of the decision of registration as potential bone marrow donor (PBMD) on the sample of 305 Polish young adults aged 18–25 years. The study was conducted using Polish versions of the following questionnaires: TIPI by Gosling et al. for measurement of the Big Five personality traits, Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (SES), PBQ (based on the Self-Report Altruism Scale by Rushton) by Moron, and Family Apgar scale by Smilkstein for assessing family function. The results obtained due to using a hybrid data-mining’ techniques LR and CART, allow the formulation of predictive equations defining the probability of making the decision to register as a potential bone marrow donor as a result of personality traits of agreeableness, conscientiousness, and self-esteem, as well as positive affect in family modelling and adaptation. However, the negative role of past prosocial behaviours, also demonstrated in research, requires further explanations. Although these methods may supplement the existing statistical models and contribute to the interpretation of factors of decision concerning the registration as a PBMD, further testing of the model according to the investigated variables requires the use of casual modelling methods in order to verify hypotheses concerning the occurrence of a specified structure of relationships between these variables.