Paying research “volunteers”

Compensating research participants has been the subject of national debate for some time. In this presentation, I will review the four most common approaches to paying research participants and critically evaluate the impact of these schemes with relation to the risk:benefit ratio in research. I will also present the growing empirical literature on the varying influence such compensation.

Toby Schonfeld, PhD is Human Subjects Research Review Official at the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).