Hello, I am researching on how children (teenagers) engage with digital technologies. I have just discovered that it may be problematic to give or not to give incentive or compensation to the children I am going to be researching. Does anyone know if there's any hard-and-fast rule to this? Thanks in advance.
This sensitive issue of payment is generally dependent on the local laws, regulations, and in some other cases, it depends even on the study-population's local culture. In some cultures and nations, it is welcome, but in another geography is not.
Hard and fast rules? Maybe. As Faranack points out this is a highly sensitive ethical issue, on point how do you ensure that response is not motivated by reward?
Not only the local culture is relevant but also the ethical stance of your institution. Both could vary dependng on what kinds of rewards are offered. Financial compensation is more often than not a no-go for obvious reasons.
Other forms of "reward" should however be on the table. Participants might look forward to receive a brief feedback to what their help has accomplished. In practice the possibilities are only limited to what your institute will sanction so good negotiation skills are certainly helpful.
A pragmatic approach from all sides is often a boost to the outcomes.
Kind Regards
Roland
If you fall under the UK academe, the UK ESRC (Economic and Social Research Council) has established guidelines on ethical practices. Usually, the guidelines are practical and could apply to most circumstances.
The "hard and fast" rules, if there are any, revolve around the integrity of your output. A simple question would be, by paying your respondents, are they susceptible to respond in a way that would alter the outcome of your research (vs not making any payments)? Simple question, but difficult to ascertain.
I am not aware of any 'rules' in this matter, but I agree with the others that giving money as an incentive or reward may pose ethical questions. In many US and Canadian universities, some money is given for participation. In India, it is not customary to 'pay' research participants (a few research sponsors do allow for that ). On my part, in my research in India I have never 'paid' any money to the participants, but have, many times, given each participant a small token of appreciation (often a piece of stationery). They are never told beforehand about this gift. One difficulty is that, whether you give the subjects something or nothing, their responses to questionnaires (especially long ones) can be pretty random. For that reason, I never really carried out my own 'long-questionnaire' research (although I have collaborated on research projects that involved exactly that ). The best incentive therefore seems to be to make their participation enjoyable, to the extent possible., and to answer their questions after the session.
I do not know if this answers anyone's question, but this IS a tricky aspect of collecting data.
The hard and fast rule is that you follow whatever your IRB (Institutional Review board), REB (research ethics board) or its equivalent tells you to do, after you discuss with them.
If there are "official groups who define the rules", as there is in U.S. (the involved Institutional Review Board) then that is the guidance. In my experience with IRBs in the U.S. mall gifts that are meaningful to the child participants (not just monetary) are preferred.
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