How Semantics Connotations May Influence Concerns About Donation of Biospecimens

Abstract

Introduction: Human biological specimen (biospecimen) donation is routinely requested for clinical care and research purposes. Successfully engaging patients and research participants in biospecimen donation depends on what they understand these initiatives entail, including their perceptions of risk. Human biospecimens are stored in facilities routinely referenced as biobanks or biorepositories, both of which labels are known to embody a variety of connotations. The words chosen to describe biospecimen facilities may influence decisions about donation. Objective: To explore differences in likelihood of donation as a function of the words chosen to represent human biospecimen storage facilities and the commensurate concerns each label evokes. Materials and Methods: Two-group experimental design. Participants completed a survey about a fictitious undertaking requesting that they consider biospecimen donation. The term used to describe the facility housing the biospecimens differed; one half of the surveys referenced a biobank, and one half referenced a biorepository. Results: Two thousand five hundred ninety-six surveys were distributed; 586 completed surveys were received (response rate: 22.6%). Sixty-three percent of respondents, regardless of whether the label referenced a biobank or biorespository, reported being extremely likely to donate. There were no significant differences between the 2 groups on the 11 concerns sampled. Factor analyses revealed that concerns could be classified in two groups: userelated concerns and person-related concerns. The label biobank evoked significantly lower perception of importance of the person-related concerns sampled (e.g., personal or other benefit, discomfort or inconvenience). Conclusions: Our results suggest that researchers may consider using the word biobank to describe the facility housing the biospecimen, as this term appears less subject to concern biases. These outcomes confirm that misunderstandings or misattributions of words used to refer to biospecimen facilities could deter participation in clinical care or research. Participation may be enhanced through ensuring clear understanding of what biospecimen donation entails and by directly addressing common semantic misunderstandings and associations.

Differences in the Semantic Differential of Beauty in the Context of an Individual’s Art and Academic Education

“…However, most of these disciplines have produced a definition from their specific perspective and these are not always universally applicable. Significant contributions have come from approaches that explore the understanding of the concept of Beauty in natural languages, either through an analysis of its connotations (Demuthova & Demuth, 2021;Page et al, 2021), an examination of common or artistic texts (Mikolov et al, 2013;de Boer et al, 2018), or a characterisation of the concept of Beauty through the use of semantic differentials (e.g., Kenett et al, 2021).…”

Beauty in The Context of Ugliness – The Similarities and Differences of Their Semantic Differentials

“…An important data resource for the definition of Beauty is to study how it is understood and used by the common population. Data on the use of terms by common users of a natural language can be obtained by various methodsfrom text analyses (Mikolov et al, 2013;de Boer et al, 2018), via the administration of questionnaires (Redaelli et al, 2020), or by studying connotations (Manchaiah et al, 2015;Page et al, 2021). It is also possible to study the situations in which the term Beauty is used; or the words that are most often associated with the term Beauty, or the characteristics that are attributed to it.…”