International Journal of Social Research Methodology 3/15 2012
Can it be ethically defended to pay respondents in social science research? Is paying money for participation worse than other strategies that are commonly applied to access respondents for social science research? And can people be harmed from participating in an interview? In this article I address these questions, and argue that in order to facilitate research that is ethically sound, research communities could benefit from widening their focus, from one strongly focussed on informed consent to a wider awareness of factors that can entail risk of harm for participants.
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