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https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/DI-32?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel&focusedCommentId=16981978#comment-16981978
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Georg Link commented on DI-32:
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This message is obsolete. We decided in
[dialog|https://the-asf.slack.com/archives/CNN750WER/p1574702069327500] on the
Slack channel to NOT offer incentives.
Here is why we decided against incentives:
We have agreed on the following standpoint regarding the gift card raffle.
We cannot speak to the legality of entering participants for a chance of
winning a gift card. First, because we are no lawyers. Second, because we could
not find sufficient information online. Third, because of what Largent (2016)
wrote: “Unfortunately, the various laws, regulations, and ethical guidelines
that govern the conduct of human subjects research offer relatively little in
the way of specific guidance about the factors and/or features that render
offers of payment ethically acceptable.”
Largant’s observation is concerned with any type of paying research
participants. The uncertainty exists despite a general agreement in academic
literature that research participants should be paid at least to cover their
expenses related to the participation (e.g., transportation, opportunity cost).
Our idea of entering participants into a raffle is a very specific case. It is
widely practiced but has opposition as well. For example, Brown et al. (2006)
published their reasoning for not allowing at their university to incentivize
research participants with entries into a raffle.
After reading up on the subject of paying participants, I collected four major
concerns, some of which we can mitigate. This is not a complete list of
concerns with paying research participants.
1) *Amount* — the reward should not exceed the cost of time invested by
participants. Some Institutional Review Boards (IRB) have guidelines like $20/h
max compensation. If we assume that our survey only takes 15 minutes, this
would mean we should pay at most $5. Let’s say we double it, and make it
$10/gift card - that is a reasonable amount that I’ve seen before and it is the
smallest gift card value offered by Amazon.
2) *Informed Consent* — participants have to be informed about their cost and
benefit of participating. We clearly give them the cost by letting them know
number of questions and time the survey takes them. We can improve the clarity
for the benefit. The benefit we provide is a chance to win one of several gift
cards. This chance is determined by the number of participants as each
participant can enter to win and thereby reduces the chances for everyone else.
We can provide participants with a worst case probability, let’s say we expect
no more than 10,000 participants and we have 100 gift cards of $10, then each
participant has a chance of about 1% or better. Ethical concerns persist
because our minds have biases that overvalue such probabilities.
3) *Justice* — paying only some participants is not just, according to some
ethical standpoints. I personally agree with a different view that it is just
for everyone to have the same chance of winning, but I am also privileged and
winning or losing does not impact my financial situation in any meaningful way.
4) *Logistics* — paying in Amazon gift cards in USD does not work
internationally. Last I know, Amazon is not in all markets and does not convert
gift cards to local currency.
We acknowledge that there are benefits to offering a raffle reward to
participants. We also acknowledge that ASF is not a university conducting
research. We acknowledge that not offering a financial incentive may result in
fewer responses. However, not offering such incentive may also contribute to
better response quality because it filters out those who take the survey only
for the chance to win a gift card (and those who respond multiple times for
better win chances).
*In Conclusion, we recommend to NOT use a raffle for incentivizing survey
participants.*
REFERENCES: * Brown, J. S., Schonfeld, T. L., & Gordon, B. G. (2006). “You May
Have Already Won...“: An Examination of the Use of Lottery Payments in
Research. IRB: Ethics & Human Research, 28(1), 12–16. Retrieved from
[https://www.jstor.org/stable/30033185]
* Largent, E. A. (2016). Recently proposed changes to legal and ethical
guidelines governing human subjects research. Journal of Law and the
Biosciences, 3(1), 206–216. [https://doi.org/10.1093/jlb/lsw001]
> Ask legal-discuss@ about offering incentives to survey takers
> -------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Key: DI-32
> URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/DI-32
> Project: Diversity and Inclusion
> Issue Type: Task
> Components: Demographics Survey
> Reporter: Griselda Cuevas Zambrano
> Assignee: Daniel Gruno
> Priority: Major
> Labels: research
> Fix For: EDI Survey v2.0
>
>
> Ask the legal-discuss@ alias if it's possible to offer incentives to survey
> takers, and if yes, what process should we follow.
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