1. Wintford Thornton
University of Wisconsin-Cooperative Extension
Office of Program and Development Evaluation
Incentive management: Suggestions before offering cash or in-kind incentives
Introduction
After the hard work of making a survey or questionnaire, the question of soliciting
participation must be addressed to assure a statistically significant and representative sample
size. Extension Educators/action researchers have the expectation that providing incentives to
disinterested persons will create enough reciprocity from the participants to motivate them to
complete the task.
What some checkpoint issues to be aware of in managing the research process when
respondents receive incentives?
When persistent efforts are taken to persuade reluctant respondents to participate, the
result may be more respondents, but more missing data when not offering an incentive (Mason
and Traugott, 1999). This does not have to be a catch 22, but “potential respondents who feel
harassed into participation may well retaliate by not putting much effort into their answers” (Singer
and Kalka, 2002, 9). Use a measure approach when communicating with prospects to avoid this
type of backlash. Singer and Kalka states “there is no evidence about the effect of incentives on
validity or reliability”
When using incentives, your human subject protection application to Institutional Review
Board needs to mention what the incentives are and amounts of compensation and any potential
or actual adverse impact on the subjects. Check that use of incentives is not prohibited according
to your funding source’s guidelines. For example, an Undersecretary of USDA was fired when
she used incentives without authorization.
It is also advisable that potential participants are recruited through neutrals and persons
without a strong influential relationship with the respondent to avoid undue peer pressure. An
emphasis needs to be made about the voluntary nature of a study when using incentives.
Interestedly enough, non-respondents should receive a nominal and lower payment even
though participating respondents significantly believe it is unfair and less willing to participate in
future survey. This feeling of unfairness was reduced to insignificance when the interviewer
offered an explanation for the payment to non-respondents. Whitcomb and Porter (2005)
mentions that the repeated use of the incentives with a group does not have a statistically
significant effect on recruiting other respondents for future participation or having to increase
future offers of incentives of bigger and more expensive incentives.
What are some ideas of the types of incentives to offer?
Realizing that some incentives work better than others do, Extension Educators face the
dilemma of when, what type and how much of an incentive (i.e., gift certificates, charitable
donations on the behalf of the participant, concert or carnival tickets). One incentive idea is
sharing what we as Extension educators we are very familiar with, the natural beauty of rural
areas by providing day trip getaway to a beach, park, or nature reserve with transportation and a
picnic included for individuals or the entire group is innovative as well as educational. Incentives
may be necessary attract and motivate individuals for donating their valuable time and energy to
further the cause of converting research into practice. Incentives can also include cash or the
chance to be considered in a lottery drawing. Whitcomb and Porter (2003) debunk the popular
notion of large prizes equates to higher response rate.

2. They mention that large-item incentives do not significantly increase response rates, yet they are
more cost-effective than distributing smaller payments to all respondents.
What are some considerations for providing incentives to people using public assistance?
Some participants on public assistance will be reluctant to accept checks or direct cash
because they are required to report any income source, which reduces their public assistance
allocation in the month they receive additional income. Extension educators need to be sensitive
to this issue and ask participants to generate ideas about what specific items they want as their
in-kind incentives. Fresh food, kitchen utensils, or clothing are practical and natural incentives.
What financial management considerations do I need?
Extension Educators may need to work with their Business Services office for payment
processing. Educators and their department should certify and approve of any Payment Request
forms and return it to their Business Office for payment processing. The department and
Extension Educators initiating the study should retain the completed survey form along with a
copy of Payment Request form, in an orderly manner, for a period of at least five years plus
current year.
If the incentive payment takes the form of a non-monetary item, the initiating department
may need to submit a request to Business Services documenting the control procedures that will
be used to account for and safeguard the in-kind incentive items. Business Services will evaluate
the request and determine if controls are adequate. A methodology must be established to
finance the purchase of the non-cash items and the subsequent accounting for their use. The
methodology will vary depending on volume and form of the incentive payment.
Your Business Services Office may be the only department authorized to disburse funds
established for these purposes. Therefore, department/units are usually prohibited from setting
up bank accounts. Your Business Services will make incentive payments upon appropriate
approval by the department. Checks processed through the accounts payable system are the
recommended way of processing incentive payments. With implementation of adequate control
procedures and pre-approval from Business Services, currency and non-cash items such as gift
certificates may be purchased and used for incentive purposes. Check with your Business
Services office to confirm whether you can use your purchasing card or travel expense credit card
to buy in-kind incentives.
Decide on the level of incentive
When deciding on the level of monetary incentive for research participation, consideration needs
to be given to transfer and production efficiency, which is:
● What would a survey of other recipients want for compensation for providing this
information?
● How does the recipient value and perceive the incentive?
● How valuable is the information is to the institution? What are other institutions paying for
respondent participation?
● What is the opportunity cost for the participant to participate and your research budget
constraint?
Will incentives bias the answers I get?
Incentives do not bring about an “increase in the response rate at the expense of
response quality.” There is no difference in the quality of responses given by respondents who
receive a prepaid or a refusal conversion incentive and those who are not give an incentive.
Recipient-responders may give better quality answers, in the form of having less item-missing
data and providing longer open-ended responses, especially in mature and nonwhite populations.
Pre-payment and post-payment of incentives from $5 to $20 and $50 do not have a statistically

3. significant effect on response (Baumgartner et al., 1998; Singer et al., 2000; Shettle and Mooney,
1999; Wiese, 1998).
Which audiences are most likely to respond to receiving an incentive? What are their
significant characteristics? (Singer and Kalka, 2002)
Those who are more likely to respond in association with receiving an incentive are:
• People for whom the survey topic has little significance or pertinence
• People with little community involvement
• People that are less satisfied with a particular situation being surveyed (i.e., parents on a
school)
• People that have higher literacy and education.
When incentives might be justified, demonstrate that such payments will significantly increase
response rates and the resulting reliability and validity of the study.
What works best regarding timing and type of incentive? (Church, 1999)
• Prepaid incentives yield higher response rates than promised incentives.
• The offer of contingent (promised) money and gifts does not significantly increase
response rates.
• Prepaid monetary incentives yield higher response rates than gifts offered with the initial
mailing.
• Response rates increase with increasing amounts of money.
• Money is more effective than a gift.
• Incentives significantly increase response rates even for low-burden tasks.
• The greater the incentive, the greater the difference in response rates between the lowest
and the higher incentive conditions.
• Incentives improve response rates in telephone and face-to-face surveys, and their effect
does not differ by mode of interviewing.
• Using lotteries as incentive for participation are less effective than pre-payment (Porter
and Whitcomb (2003, 2005).
• It is better to offer a pre-paid incentive, rather than a post-survey payment (contingent
promise). (Porter and Whitcomb (2003, 2005).
• Substantial increases in response rates occur as a result of small prepayments to
respondents to which interviewers were blind (Presser and Blair, 1989).
What more influential in changing response rates? Is it the interviewers or the incentives?
In interviewer-mediated surveys, interviewers expect respondents who have received an
incentive to be more cooperative and thus interact with respondents confidently and effectively
(Hyman, 1954; Sudman, Bradburn, Blair, and Stocking, 1977; Singer and Kohnke-Aguirre, 1979;
Singer, Frankel, and Glassman, 1983; and Hox, 1999; and Lynn, 1999). On the other hand,
interviewers may feel more confident about approaching a household that has received an
incentive in the mail, and therefore, they may be more effective in their interaction with the
potential respondent.

4. Does race mediate response rates when using incentives?
Mack et al. (1998) found that the use of a $20 incentive was much more effective in
recruiting and retaining black households and households in poverty than it was in recruiting and
retaining non-black and non-poverty households. Martin et al. (2001) found that $20 was more
effective in converting black and “other race” non-respondents than in converting white
respondents. Finally, analyses by Singer et al. (2000) indicate that a $5 incentive paid randomly
in advance to half of the surveyed households for which an address could be located brought a
disproportionate number of low-education respondents into the sample; there were no significant
differences on other demographic characteristics. Researchers (Mack, Huggins, Keathley and
Sundukch, 1988) shows that the use of a $20 incentive was much more effective in recruiting and
retaining black households and households in poverty than it was in recruiting and retaining non-
black and non-poverty households.
What works pre-paid or post-payments for recruitment?
Time is money and a dollar is worth more today than tomorrow, because the recipient can use the
money and receive the benefit immediately either through saving, investment or consumption.
Therefore, it is better to offer a pre-paid incentive, rather than post-survey payment (contingent
promise). For example Singer and Kulka (2002) states that:
Kerachsky and Mallar (1981) found with a sample of economically disadvantaged
youth suggests that prepayment may be helpful in locating members of a list
sample, especially in later waves of a longitudinal survey. One reason,
apparently, is that prepayment (and perhaps promised incentives from a trusted
source) may be useful in persuading friends or relatives to forward the survey
organization’s advance letter or to provide interviewers with a current telephone
number for the designated respondent.
It is a given that people want their time valued and the effort they put in recognized with
compensation and that is why we give incentives to participants in research.
What is the equilibrium of participants’ wants versus how the Extension Educator values
the incentive?
Economically speaking, the researcher should ask the participants what a specific task
(i.e., filling out a survey) is worth rather than use a pre-determined amount like $5, 10, or $20,
because their can be a marked difference between the monetary expectations between the two
parties. For example, there can be a large loss of transfer efficiency if the respondent suggested
only receiving $5 for the 1 hour of their time, when their time vis-à-vis a wage is $10 per hour. In
other words, the value of a cash incentive is higher than an item (in the case a survey), since
individuals may value items differently.
A more direct answer to the question what is the amount of money to offer for survey
participation would be $5, $10, $20 or even $100 or $200. The Office of Management and
Budget (OMB) uses a $20-$30 range for motivating respondents. These incentives would be
combined with an explanatory advance letter and other techniques such as, “endorsements by
people or organizations important to the population being surveyed, assurances of confidentiality”
(Singer and Kulka, 2002). Incentives had virtually no impact in groups of people with a high
interest with the topic of survey. If someone is already interested in the study, then giving him or
her, an incentive is a double award, because they would have participated in the study without
the incentive (Martinez-Ebers, 1997; Baumgartner and Rathbun, 1997; Berlin, Mohadjer,
Waksberg, Kolstad, Kirsch, Rock, and Yamamoto 1992; and Groves, Singer, Corning, and
Bowers, 1999, 2000).

5. Warning in using incentives
Providing incentives for survey participation involves budgetary, ethical, and motivational
issues. Even with, Extension Educators acting on the highest intention, potential respondents
may regard incentives as coercive, which is an indirect and unanticipated effect. A trend of
reluctance has emerged with Institutional Review Boards that incentives may be regarded as
coercive, if large compensations are offered, being that the respondents feel they cannot really
refuse especially among low-income respondents, thereby posing a credible threat to truly
informed consent. Clearly, modest incentives are tokens of appreciation, which are not truly
compensating for the absolute, but rather the relative value of the respondent’s time.
Since, low-income individuals are considered a vulnerable population, think about the
issues (e.g., risks --physical, economic, legal, social) involved in decision-making (Brown, Martin,
and Weigel, 2004) about participation if a person with a low income is offered a large incentive.
Putting someone in this situation can pose a credible threat to truly informed consent. In sum,
you need to ask the question, do I need use incentives and what are the pros and cons of using
them.
References
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Response Rates. Unpublished paper presented at the Annual Conference of the American
Association of Public Opinion Research, Norfolk, VA, May 15-18.
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promised incentives: Results of a controlled experiment.” Journal of Official Statistics, 3: 449–
457.
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6. Hox, Joop. (1999). “The influence of interviewer’s attitude and behavior on household survey non-
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7. Abstract
In today’s outreach work in communities, Extension Educators need to conduct action research
with survey and questionnaires in a cost-efficiency matter. This articles reviews best practices
incentive management. Offering incentive payments has levels of receptiveness and
effectiveness. Providing pre-paid incentives results in better response rates than post-paid
incentives. Prepaid incentives are better than lotteries. Multiple personalized contacts can
increase response rates. Incentives had virtually no impact in individuals with a pertinent and
high-interest in the topic of the survey. Care needs to taken to align the amount of incentive to the
participants’ actual need to avoid the common error of overpayment. Non-respondents should
receive a nominal payment.