Tag Archives: Research

Research Topic: Does your blood type indicate how giving you are?

Thinking about my blood type got me wondering whether there is a relationship between your blood type and how willing to give you are.  To refresh:

  • A’s can take blood from A and O, but can only give to A and AB.
  • B’s can take blood from B and O, but can only give to B and AB.
  • AB’s can take blood from AB, A, B and O, but can only give to AB.
  • O’s can take blood from O, but can give to anyone.

Based on these facts, O’s are able to give to the most people, AB’s the least and A’s and B’s are in between.  So the hypothesis is “Do O’s give the most, AB’s the least and A’s and B’s somewhere in between.

One easy way to test this hypotheis, assuming that there is no skew towards finding O’s on the part of the blood banks, is to look at the volume of blood donated every year by blood type.

Other tests could be to select a random group of people, test their blood type and look at how much money they donated as a percentage of their income, or the number of hours they volunteered in a year.