My institution's REB has directed that we not tell potential interview participants how much they would receive for participating.
This is an issue for me as it contravenes the principle of transparency. I am particularly concerned that this practice may prevent poorer participants from determining whether or not they can afford to participate in research (e.g., whether the honoraria will be sufficient to cover childcare, transport, etc). Are there any scholarly works I could cite to make my case?
This is good question from your side in now a days please. But, definitely have reasonable amount of honoraria for transport,....etc. I know many scholars are working in this mode please.
Most research ethics committees (RECs) require that research participants are paid transport reimbursements and incentives for participation. Although there is no fixed amount for incentives, most RECs recommend that research participants should be paid reasonable incentives that would not unduly induce them to participate in research. Of course, there are different models that are employed in paying incentives to research participants. Personally, I prefer the wage model in which a research participant is paid an hourly wage equivalent to the wages paid to unskilled laborers calculated according to the estimated number of hours spent from home to the research site by the farthest research participant. For instance, if an interview takes one hour and the farthest research participant takes one hour to travel to the venue of the interview, you may want to pay an incentive that is equivalent to a three hour wage to each of your research participants in addition to the transport reimbursement. I have never had problems with my REC on this model of payment and it is worthy considering. See the attached article on payment of research subjects by Christine Grady for your reference.
Under the US federal regulations, compensation should not be an undue inducement. An undue inducement is a payment/compensation that would affect the the prospective subject's risk-benefit calculus and could affect their willingness to participate against their better interests. When the risks of the research are minimal, payment should not affect the risk-benefit decision (no risks).
In the opinion of many, the payment for an interview can be as large as necessary to obtain sufficient subjects to do the research. The objective would be to pay subjects enough to offset the subject's value to pursue their own objectives rather than yours.
Our IRB policies do not permit listing the dollar amount of payment in advertising but when speaking to the subject, it is totally reasonable to tell subjects how much they will be paid.
The CHOP IRB's website has a page on payments to subjects.
https://irb.research.chop.edu/payments-subjects
Also of use would be the SOPs on recruitment (703) and the one on payments (704). These can be found at:
https://irb.research.chop.edu/policies
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