CommunityData:Research participant compensation

If you are doing an interview, survey, etc. study that involves human subjects compensation (e.g. you are paying participants to thank them for their time with X amount of money), there are a few things to keep in mind. This is some documentation with respect to the process.

Each university is different but in all likelihood, you will always need to submit an IRB first if there is human subjects compensation. The nature of many of our studies is that they will be exempt, however, you should/must still submit for IRB review.

Northwestern procedures

• There are different rules about compensating individuals from sponsored accounts (e.g. grants) and non-sponsored accounts (e.g. discretionary funds). In general, it seems that sponsored accounts have stricter procedures. You should first check if there is enough money allocated in the sponsored account for human subjects compensation.
• Northwestern has some standardized fields to include in forms for participants to fill out to confirm they have received compensation. Given the online nature of a lot of our work, it has been possible previously to get the forms signed by participants digitally (via Qualtrics form), as long as the form has all the appropriate and necessary fields.
• Northwestern so far has made it simple to compensate individuals with Amazon gift cards. However, note that Amazon gift cards (and gift cards in general) can only be used in the country that they were purchased in, which is generally the United States. As a result, compensating international participants requires more planning.
• Compensating international participants is very complicated [more to add]

University of Washington

UW uses Tango Card to compensate research study participants.