Overview

It's not uncommon to offer remuneration to participants when running a study. When have to be careful about ethical and financial implications. The finance portal has posted guidelines:

https://uwaterloo.ca/finance/policies-procedures/remuneration-research-participants (The full guidelines PDF document is here)

Standard procedure is to offer gift cards to participants: prepurchase them, hand them out to participants after their session, and get reimbursed afterwards. Details for each step follow.

Before Running Your Study

• Decide with your supervisor if/how you will remunerate participants
• Make sure that the type and amount of remuneration is clearly detailed in your ORE documents
• If handing out gift cards, buy them ahead of time

During the Study

• Create a spreadsheet that includes participant details (esp. participant id, date and amount of remuneration)
• After the participant completes the study, have them sign a "Research Participant's Acknowledgement of Receipt of Remuneration" form
• Hand them the gift card (!)

Getting Reimbursed

• Fill out a "Request for Reimbursement for Remunerating Research Participants" form
• Have your supervisor (as PI) fill out details and sign it
• Take the following to Wendy
  • The signed reimbursement form
  • A participant list containing just: date, amount, and participant ID for each participant. Do NOT include any personally identifiable information
  • All receipts

-- JeffAvery - 2013-07-08