Paying participants in addiction research: Is cash king?

ABSTRACT

I know there’s some real scary, hardcore stories of people selling vouchers, but I’ve never experienced anything like that. If I got a voucher, I would often see it as a bonus. If it was for a shop I didn’t use, I would sell it to someone I knew for the same amount of money – them just doing me a favour really. I wouldn’t sell a voucher for less than its value.

KEYWORDS:

• Addiction
• cash
• payments
• research
• vouchers

Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest

JN receives honoraria and some expenses from Addiction journal in her role as Commissioning Editor and Senior Qualitative Editor. JS is a researcher and clinician who has worked with a range of types of treatment and rehabilitation service-providers. He has also worked with a range of governmental and non-governmental organizations, and with pharmaceutical companies to seek to identify new or improved treatments from whom he and his employer (King’s College London) have received honoraria, travel costs and/or consultancy payments. This includes work with (past 3 years) Martindale, Reckitt-Benckiser/Indivior, MundiPharma, Braeburn/MedPace, and trial medication supply from iGen. His employer (King’s College London) has registered intellectual property on a novel buccal naloxone formulation and he has also been named in a patent registration by a Pharma company as inventor of a concentrated nasal naloxone spray. For a fuller account, see JS’s web-page at http://www.kcl.ac.uk/ioppn/depts/addictions/people/hod.aspx. JS and JN have additionally received project grant support from Mundipharma for exploration of patient perspectives on medication formulation options and also perspectives on clinical trial participation; this research, involving CT and RM, is in preparation.

Funding

Joanne Neale is part-funded by, and John Strang is supported by, the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Biomedical Research Centre for Mental Health at South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust and King’s College London. The views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the NHS, the NIHR, or the Department of Health.

Notes

1. The SURG is financially supported by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Biomedical Research Centre for Mental Health at South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust and King’s College London.

2. We use the term “paying” here, but recognize that other terms (e.g., “compensating,” “incentivizing,” “reimbursing,” “rewarding”) might be equally valid.

Additional information

Funding

Joanne Neale is part-funded by, and John Strang is supported by, the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Biomedical Research Centre for Mental Health at South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust and King’s College London. The views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the NHS, the NIHR, or the Department of Health.