Students enrolled in a special topics course entitled “A practicum in conducting research in microeconomics” are conducting a quarter-long joint research project in collaboration with Bloodworks Northwest. This class aims to give students exposure to research in microeconomics, including human subjects protections, survey design, sample selection, the implementation of experiments, and data analysis. In particular, the students collaborated with Bloodworks staff, including CEO Curt Bailey, to design a survey on students’ perceptions of blood donation and have been surveying their fellow students throughout the quarter. Students also worked to design a sampling strategy that elicited responses from as representative a sample of students as possible. This component of the project was particularly important for Bloodworks, who are interested in college students’ perceptions of blood donation, but have a hard time reaching them in their standard ways of conducting surveys through email or online recruitment.
Another component of the project involves an experiment to see what “nudge” works best to incentivize students to give blood. Student surveyors handed out one of three flyers to their fellow students doing the survey: a standard flyer for Bloodworks that serves as a control condition; one that mentions that there currently is a critical blood shortage; and one that mentions the possibility to win a trip to Hawaii. Students are in the process of analyzing whether either “treatment” flyer lead to more interest in blood donation!