I was having a chat with a fellow PhD student the other day, and the issue of whether or not you reward participants in some way for their time came up. It reminded me of when I was debating this old classic myself. At first, I was dead set on offering participants some kind of financial incentive/reward for their involvement in the research process, but after working through it, I eventually decided against it.

I considered three main options:

a)    Do not mention prior to the interview / focus group, but afterwards reward participants for their time with a small token of appreciation e.g. gift voucher

b)    Mention up-front that participants will receive token of appreciation

c)    Provide teas, coffees, nibbles etc but do not financially reward participants for their time

Option a has the advantage that it may have helped avoid the risk of participants feeling in any way coerced to take part in the study for the financial gain, which could disproportionately affect those who might appreciate the money the most (e.g. lower income, working part time). It may also have helped avoid participants feeling pressure to give certain ‘right’ answers to the researcher. However, a disadvantage is that the fact of the payment would not be able to be used to aid the recruitment process. Additionally, it may have been difficult to keep the fact of the payment hidden, particularly amongst groups of friends. Some women may have persuaded their friends to take part on the grounds that there was a gift voucher to be had. Option b is more transparent and would have avoided this issue and possibly aided considerably in recruitment. However, there is still a risk that participants may feel ‘coerced’, and possibly the greatest risk is that people may have taken part for the wrong reasons (e.g. the gift voucher) rather than because they have a lot to say or are interested in contributing to the project. This could result in the research process producing less rich data. Considering these pros and cons, I decided not to offer payment or incentive, but to provide refreshments and cover travel costs where relevant. I predicted that the research topic would hopefully be interesting and relevant to young women (well, of course, I would say that!), who would come forward without the offer of additional incentives. Similarly, I was not specifically targeting a particularly hard-to-reach or very narrow group, so had a large pool of potential participants as there were very few limits on who can take part within the gender and age range. I also thought that in this way the decision could always be revisited at a later date if recruitment proved problematic. And as it turned out, I think it was probabaly the right choice. Women have come forward because – so they tell me – they are interested in the topic and want to help out with the research. Having said that, I know every project is different, and for some research – for example with hard-to-reach groups – it may be appropriate to offer some sort of incentive or payment.