Monetary incentives (created 2005-01-03)

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Someone on the IRBForum asked about monetary incentives in research. This is a controversial area (see the OHRP website, Foy 1998, Sugarman 2004, Young 2001), and especially controversial for studies involving children (Fernhoff 2002) but monetary incentives do indeed help improve recruitment, at least for a postal survey (Edwards 2002; Smeeth 2002).

For what it's worth, there are a lot of other things besides monetary incentives that influence recruiting and retention. Sometimes something as simple as promising to share the results of the study when it is completed will have a positive impact on recruitment.