Earlier in my research project, I considered compensating my research subjects in some way. Mostly, it was motivated by a concern about follow-through; I wanted to make sure I could attract students to stay after school when so many other interesting possibilities vied for their attention.
Ultimately, I decided not to do so. My study has to do with student engagement, and I decided that paying my subjects or compensating them otherwise could skew the results in favor of engagement. After all, people tend to perform better when financial incentives enter the picture. While I feel like not compensating my students raises risks in terms of completing the research on time, I considered the integrity of the data paramount.
I stumbled across a journal article by Neal Dickert and Christine Grady that brings up this same concern, although in the context of medical research. Their analysis goes much farther, however, as medical research has considerably more ethical concerns than research that involves playing a board game. All the same, this article has rekindled my interest in the subject, and reconfirmed my suspicion that bringing compensation into the equation is probably best avoided when possible.
