IRB: Ethics & Human Research

Payment to Participants in Pediatric Research: Variation in IRB Members’ Attitudes

This article reports our findings from a study investigating the attitudes of IRB members toward compensation for participation in pediatric research.

Payment to participate in research may have an important role to play with respect to recruitment and retention. However, consideration must also be given to the potential for payments to have undue influence on prospective research participants. This issue is all the more complex in pediatric research, where the decision about enrollment follows the parent permission/child assent model. Deciding whether a proposed compensation amount has the potential to be unduly influential falls to the institutional review board (IRB). However, in the absence of federal regulations and guidance for judging the appropriateness of compensation for children and parents, there is a risk of reliance on moral intuition and inconsistency in the IRB review process. This article reports our findings from a study investigating the attitudes of IRB members toward compensation for participation in pediatric research.

Joshua S. Crites, Thomas D. Harter, Lydia M. Furman, and Barbara J. Daly, “Payment to Participants in Pediatric Research: Variation in IRB Members’ Attitudes,” IRB: Ethics & Human Research 35, no. 5 (2013): 9-13.