Angela,
You should always give participants *something* to thank them for
helping you evaluate a design. There are a few of ways to look at this
in recruiting:
Incentives -- something to motivate a person to take part in your study
Compensation -- a payment in exchange for time and/or services
Honoraria -- payment in recognition for acts or services for which a
price typically isn't set
Whatever, the point is to be as generous as you possibly can be,
because the people whose time you're taking are doing you a favor. You
can't get good data about how users perform with a design without the
users.
What the incentive/compensation/ honoraria is *does* influence whether
people answer your call for participants. It does not affect whether
they show up or how good the data is that they give you when they're
in the usability study (or other research). Data is good if the
participants are appropriate.
What determines whether participants show up are two things: 1) Are
they motivated to do what you want to observe in the study -- is it a
typical behavior that they already engage in? and 2) How much of a
relationship you've established with them already. If you treat
participants like lab rats or data points, they're not invested in
showing up. If you treat them like important partners, real people who
you're interested in learning about, they will show up.
As for what the incentive should be:
Start with a simple "thank you." A hand-written thank-you note goes a
long way.
Generally, cash works great, for nearly every level of study or
participant. If it's a small test, gift cards for coffee or a local
lunch place can work well. Larger gift certificates for shopping
opportunities like Amazon work really well in situations when you're
asking more of participants.
High school and college students were completely turned off by gift
cards to a specific book store.
I'll let Jared Spool talk about paying people in compelled shopping
usability tests.
If you have participants inside your company, you can give away schwag
like sweatshirts or mugs or calendars, flashlights, pens, etc. This
can work with some types of customers, too.
You can offer instead things like subscriptions or versions of your
software or web site that would normally cost something substantial.
Otherwise, typically government employees are restricted from taking
gifts like incentives. There may be restrictions on compensation for
people in some roles that are heavily regulated or have intense
ethical scrutiny. Wealthy people don't care about cash; likewise some
people in executive management or high-level professionals don't want
the money. In those cases, we offer to make a donation to a favorite
charity.
In short: No, the type of incentive does not affect the quality or
reliability of the participants. What affects the quality and
reliability of the participants is the interviewing/selection process.
Good luck!
Dana
:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::
Dana Chisnell
415.519.1148
dana AT usabilityworks DOT net
www.usabilityworks.net
http://usabilitytestinghowto.blogspot.com/
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