Can students or employees serve as research participants

15. Can students or employees serve as research participants? Yes. However, in addition to avoiding all obvious forms of coercion and undue influence, researchers must take precautions not to unintentionally or subliminally coerce anyone into studies. Subtle coercion often occurs when a potential research participant is also a student, employee, colleague, or subordinate. For this reason, researchers should avoid using their own students or employees as research participants. If there is a good scientific reason for including students, researchers should:

Make sure students are confident that their participation will not influence class standing, grades, or other benefits under the control of the researcher.
Limit the use of extra credit points as a reward for participating (they should be used only when the research is closely tied to the course subject matter and they should not raise a student's grade by a whole step, e.g., from a B to an A).
Keep financial rewards commensurate with the risks of participation. If possible, avoid using class time to recruit participants or complete study instruments. Inform students who might participate about the review process, the rationale for the study, the process of data collection, and the researcher's interest.

Researchers who include colleagues or subordinates as research participants, must be able to provide a rationale other than convenience for selecting them and must show that the recruitment method does not lead colleagues to think they will be compromised by not participating. Recruitment through bulletin board advertisements or by a third party is preferable to direct recruitment.

Information about how students and colleagues will be recruited and rewarded should be included in the information submitted to the IRB.