Behavioural Insights

The Cabinet Office Behavioural Insight Team recently published preliminary results of a randomised control test looking at the effect of different messages on donor registration: their report can be found here (1.2MB pdf). They found that a message stressing reciprocity had the greatest effect on increasing registrations. Interestingly, putting a picture of a group of people alongside an appeal resulted in fewer registrations that a message without a picture.

Moorlock on Queue-Jumping

An interesting (short and for-public) piece by Greg Moorlock here on the merits and problems of an Israeli-style priority for donors scheme here. It also connects back to our previous discussion of families, noting that the family veto will almost certainly have to be abolished if priority schemes are to work. Very relevant for what we've recently been discussing and highly recommended.

Nudge, Nudge

I discovered a 'new' (as in, new to me) weblog about nudging here, run by a group of geographers (mostly) from Aberystwyth. I've not thoroughly explored yet, but it looks interesting. In particular, of relevance here, are their comments on organ donation. (Richard Thaler's own favoured position is 'prompted choice', rather than 'presumed consent'.) Another interesting point is that the term 'nudge' was suggested by the publisher. Perhaps this explains why Thaler and Sunstein (infamously) don't clearly define it...

This all came to my attention because one of the blog authors, Jessica Pykett, is speaking at Stirling next week.

Policy Engagement

This isn't specifically to do with organ policy, but this recent Guardian feature covers ten tips for academics seeking to engage with policymakers. I hope we can, for the most part, follow this advice in the course of the coming year (and beyond) of the RSE project.