Research participant policy and forms.

Purchasing Compensation Incentives for Research Study Participation

Amazon Gift Cards

For researchers wishing to provide monetary incentives for participation in a study, Amazon gift cards are the preferred option.  Faculty, staff, and GRAs can purchase these using their Amazon Business Prime account. 

1. Login into your Amazon Business Prime account.  (if you don't yet have an account, see these instructions)
2. Shop for the gift cards you need and be sure you've correctly selected your desired gift card format (physical cards, printable pdf downloads, direct email delivery).
3. NOTE: Amazon gives you the option of "e-delivery" gift cards or "print-at-home gift cards".  Unless you've already completed your study and have all the email address for your participant incentive recipients in hand, it's recommended that you choose the "print-at-home" option so you can download the pdf files yourself and distribute as needed. 
4. Proceed to checkout.  In lieu of the usual payment process, you'll be greeted with an alert that the purchase will require approval from your departmental administrator.

IMPORTANT: Before proceeding beyond this point, you must submit the following information within the Comments for approver text box:

• • The official title of your research study. (may be abbreviated if necessary)
  • IRB protocol number.  (or "N/A" if not applicable)
  • Funding source for the purchase you're submitting (consult with your study's PI if you're uncertain)
  • Name of Principle Investigator (initials are fine if limited spaces requires)
  • Estimated date for when all gift cards will be distributed.  (completed log forms (see below) will be due within one week from this date)
    
    NOTE: Most of the above may be truncated/abbreviated as much as necessary to fit the limited space, but the funding source and IRB# must be clearly comprehensible. 

Other Gift Card Options

Other non-Amazon gift cards can be requested in advance by emailing your departmental purchaser with the following details:

• • Preferred gift card vendor (ex: Target, HEB, etc.) 
  • Number & value of cards needed
  • The account from which to fund this purchase
  • Title of affiliated research study and IRB protocol number
  • Principle Investigator for the study (if this isn't you, make sure you copy them on the email)
  • Estimated time frame in which gift cards are expected to be fully dispersed.

* Once all of the gifts in any given batch have been dispersed, you are required to formally account for them by returning one of the forms below to your departmental purchaser as soon as possible. If circumstances prevent you from distributing the gifts within the time frame specified in your initial request, please follow up with your departmental purchaser with a status update.

Logging Your Study Incentive Distributions

State and university regulations require that you maintain accurate logs of how all monetary study incentives are distributed and submit them to your departmental accounting authorities by using one of the forms below.

Multiple Participant Receipt Form

More often than not, this is the form you'll want to use when giving out gift cards to study participants. Its instructions are pretty straight-forward and it allows you to document up to 9 participants on each page. Essentially, all that's required is each recipient's signature, printed name, and the value of compensation they've received.

If your study participants intend to remain anonymous, you may assign them a unique identification number and submit it in lieu of a signature/printed name. Please note that by choosing this option, you are required to maintain your own documentation verifying the authenticity of those anonymous identifiers.

Below is an example of how to complete the Multiple Participant Receipt Form, followed by a link to download the form itself. 

multiple-participant.pdf

Individual Receipt Form

This form is rarely used in our department. Though you're certainly free to fill one out for each of your individual gift recipients, it's only really necessary in instances where a participant is expecting to receive compensation from UT totaling more than $600 in any given calendar year. As with the multi-participant form, completion of this form is fairly self-explanatory, and the same policies apply with regard to anonymous study participation.

See the sample image below for some instructional tips, followed by a link to download the form.

individual-participant (1).pdf