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lack of support for the decision, and 3 (.4%) mentioned that they hadn’t wanted to discuss
death. Ten people (1.2%) reported both a personal or family story and moral/altruistic
reasons as being discussed. Twenty-two (2.6%) of the participants gave responses which
did not fit into any of the categories; these were coded as “other.”
Item 14 asked for a description, in as much detail as the respondent could recall,
of the response of the family member during this conversation. Three hundred and
twenty people (37.4%) did not respond to this item, and 64 (7.5%) wrote that they had
not discussed this topic. Of those who did report a reaction, 232 (27.1%) indicated that
the family member agreed with the decision to donate, 92 (10.7%) noted that the family
member would respect his or her wishes either way, 16 (1.9%) reported that the family
member agreed with not donating, 14 (1.6%) that the family member doesn’t agree with
donating, nine (1.1%) that the family member doesn’t agree with donating but will
respect the respondent’s wishes, six (.7%) that the family member doesn’t agree with not
donating but will respect the respondent’s wishes. Only four people (.5%) simply noted
that the family member doesn’t agree with not donating. Sixteen (1.9%) indicated that
there was no consensus amongst family members, and 15 (1.8%) that the family member
was still deciding. Forty (4.7%) gave ambiguous responses, while 28 (3.3%) were coded
into an “other” category.
Hypothesis and Research Question
The variables reported above were then examined for gender differences. A
series of t-tests was conducted on all of the data except the responses to the two open-
ended questions. The items which were originally coded as 1=yes, 2=no, and 3= not sure
were recoded to a rough ordinal scale of 1=yes, 2=not sure, 3=no. These results indicated
Convention