32% US students would rape

Maybe in soft, social sciences but you'd never get that past an ethical board for research with a purpose.

Not that it detracts from the fact its bad science.

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As you as you don't claim otherwise, why would that be problematic?

You can see that as useless or that they suggest little (but they can lead to further studies or could just make the point that it might be worthwhile to put more money into this thing/field), but if they didn't say 'this bunch of psychology students I had in my class proves that people all of history blah blah blah' it's not necessarily 'bad science'.

It is terrible methodology. You're paying people to do an anonymous survey. What do you think that will do to the results, especially in a young population known to enjoy "****ing about"?

The survey will not be taken seriously by some, and used for monetary gain only. It's different when someone volunteers on the basis of interest than when someone volunteers for monetary gain.

You do realise most research recruit participants by paying them to do it anonymously?

Define most research. Besides, do you think that is a good thing that has no impact on study results?

In fact, colleges and departments give us grants to offer money to recruit participants, and there are many going on at the university at various levels. This includes medical research, from testing of vaccines and medication to more theoretical studies.

Using cash to recruit participants is a lot better than using credits or forcing students on your course to participate in your study, which some researchers (many Americans, and in the field of psychology all over the world) do do. Here in my university, psychology students are required to do a certain number of hours of research participation in order to graduate.

You know what studies don't pay their participants? Undergraduate dissertations, The Guardian's testimonial entries, polls on TSR and The Tab, as well as the People's Choice Award.

Outside of academia, this is the standard practice, too. Market research, focus groups for brands and products, and even ratings for television.

Paying participants is only reasonable because you do need time and effort from the participants when it's very unlikely for them to have actual personal gains from the participation. We also happen to live in a free society where people are driven by capitalism, and have human rights. Even a corpus cannot just collect texts everywhere without clearing for copyrights and such.

Paying participants do not in itself create problems for the study.

It depends how you recruit them. You should need to make sure it's a large enough sample size, all participants are in your target group (no gay-for-pay etc), and that you recruit them openly with a diverse background (not just your family, friends, classmates, or people in your college or department).

Testing of vaccines and medication aren't anonymous endeavours—you can't go to test a new drug at a medicines evaluation unit and then lie about your heart rate. You can't even non-comply in this instance unless you withdraw entirely. Also in medical research the payment is strongly outweighed by the consequences of not reporting negative effects of a drug. Let's say you're being tested on a new beta-blocker and you develop palpitations: the fear of side effects being serious outweighs any reason to lie about not having them. You're getting paid either way anyway.

Ultimately what we're getting at is that you have to pay participants in a lot of psychological research. You wouldn't get any study participants without the incentive in a lot of fields. That should tell you a lot about people's motivations for entering the research altogether.

There is substantial evidence that paying participants can affect results. In general the more you pay, the more influential the effect becomes.

X

'steal', perhaps. But I feel confident that it isn't, or isn't solely, the law that is keeping me or most from raping and murdering. Never felt tempted.

For somebody who likes to toot their own horn, you don't have a very good background understanding of the research base.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8740519
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00224499909551968#.VLqMiS6aWno
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7661653

There are countless studies that show that those who are given extra credit or payment for services rendered when completing sexual research were more likely to be sexual experienced, have sexual attitudes outside of the norm, and have greater propensity for seeking sexual experiences. These are all findings that are focusing on research to sexual attitudes, pretty relevant to the study at hand, dontcha think?

I can't believe I'm having to explain to somebody, who apparently has done and read lots of research at a large institution, why having a study population of almost exclusively caucasian university students, whom are participating for extra credit limits the external validity of the study.

Extra credit is worse than financial incentives, and this is reflected in the evidence base. There are also specific flaws (there are lots of other studies if you want to google) when you are looking at sexuality research. I mean come on, surely if you're so heavily involved in research as you say, you should know that this sort of thing is quite strictly looked at at ethical boards and should be limited to compensation/reimbursement for essentially travel and time from work (hence payment is usually calculated using the local areas average hourly wage, if it's offered at all).

If I offered people £500 quid to participate in my current study, I'd get people who need the money (and all the socio-economic factors associated with that), are likely to lie about inclusion/exclusion criteria, and you're more open to appeasement bias (in my case, effort expended during study and in questionaires, what they think researchers want to hear). Again, this is all strongly grounded in research and common sense, to be perfectly honest.

Just to mention that if you have bipolar disorder or borderline personality disorder or if you don't, Oxford will pay expenses for your time (in most of the world we call reimbursing someone for the use of their time "wages") in participating in a a research project.

Here is the advert in this week's edition of Oxford's official Gazette.

http://www.ox.ac.uk/gazette/2014-2015/15january2015-no5082/advertisements/#192513

There are countless studies that show that those who are given extra credit or payment for services rendered when completing sexual research were more likely to be sexual experienced, have sexual attitudes outside of the norm, and have greater propensity for seeking sexual experiences. Just put your critical thinking hat on, it's pretty obvious why conclusions and it's easy to understand why. These are all findings that are focusing on research to sexual attitudes, pretty relevant to the study at hand, dontcha think?

I said it is standard practice in academia, in many fields, to pay their participants.

I said many research studies which had their participants paid have been published on well-regarded journals and cited widely.

I said many world-class academics have careers built on putting out research that involve paying participants.

No ****. Paying participants AND skewing the results CAN discredit a study. No one's claiming it's universally true.



Wrongly, unless it's expenses. It will skew results. It may or may not be statistically skewed, but it's bad practice because you're risking inviting people who have no interest in giving real results. He's already provided you sources, there are plenty more. Just go do a simple Google search for "financial incentives in research participants".



This is an argument from authority and means **** all. It is bad practice to simply rely on expertise of authors and assume their methods are flawless.

Honestly, if you don't understand how financial incentives invite people with only a financial gain to a study, and the negative consequences of that, then I don't know where to go from here.