Objective: Research with children and adolescents has increasingly become a focus of interest for individual researchers, agencies, and policy makers. With the 1998 mandate from the National Institutes of Health that investigators provide justification for excluding children, researchers have become more willing to include children as part of their studies. Yet it is clear that not all components of the research process (e.g. recruitment and retention, incentives, etc.) are applicable for children without careful consideration and adaptation. One area for which this is especially true is the use of incentives with children that are used to encourage their participation in research. The use of incentives for research with children is one rarely addressed in the literature.
Findings: The purpose of this presentation is to discuss the theoretical definitions of incentives found in the literature, describe the types of incentives used with children and their families (as reported in the literature), describe factors influencing the investigator's choice of incentives, and discuss ethical considerations and concerns that arise with the use of incentives, including the potential for coercion and deception. Finally, implications and recommendations for the use of research-related incentives with children and their parents will be discussed, including the use of developmentally appropriate strategies.
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