With the growth in industry sponsored clinical trials, there is increasing concern about the ethics of paying researchers to recruit human subjects. But little is known about the impact of such payments on motivating researchers as well as on their success in recruiting subjects.
 
A study in IRB: Ethics & Human Research examined the effects of financial remuneration on recruitment for two clinical trials that provided respiratory support to premature newborns.

Recruitment for both studies was the responsibility of respiratory therapists in the neonatal intensive care unit. The collective research team was financially compensated only when it succeeded in getting parents to enroll their infants in one of the trials. Parents were unaware of the financial arrangement.
 
The researchers approached 43 parents about enrolling their newborns in trial A - the study with the remuneration - than in trial B for which 12 parents were approached. But, surprisingly, the percentage of parents who consented was higher for trial B. All 12 parents enrolled their newborns in trial B, compared with 16, or 35 percent, in trial A.

The authors of the Canadian study proposed several explanations for why a lower percentage of parents enrolled their infants in trial A, including several differences between the trials themselves.

For instance, trial A was a placebo-controlled study, and parents are often reluctant to enroll their children in these types of studies. Yet, the authors noted that parents might have "felt pressured to participate in study A and thus decided not to enroll their child in it." However, the respiratory therapists reported that they did not recall feeling that the financial compensation associated with study A influenced their recruitment approach.

The authors point out that the impact of financial remuneration on a research team's activities remains inconclusive, though some institutions now require researchers to disclose to prospective research subjects their financial ties to the trial sponsor.