Data collection is often a burdensome and time-consuming activity for research participants, particularly when it involves hours-long surveys. Researchers may wonder if they should pay participants for their time, how much they should offer, and whether it should take the form of cash or in-kind provision. They may worry that a failure to pay participants risks exploitation, but also that the promise of payment may unduly influence or even coerce people to participate, particularly when prospective participants are poor. I explore these issues in this post, focusing first on the rationale for payment before turning to concerns regarding coercion and undue inducement.
One ethical concern that researchers and implementation partners confront with the use of experiments to evaluate policy interventions is the withholding of an intervention or policy – e.g. a cash transfer or empowerment collective – from otherwise eligible people. This concern may be alleviated in cases where there is a scarcity of resources. It is also alleviated when the relevant community of experts is in a state of equipoise regarding the merits of the intervention under study and the status quo. In this post, I discuss some of the factors to be considered when making judgments regarding equipoise.
In order to conduct an impact evaluation, researchers and implementation partners sometimes justify withholding an intervention from some eligible people to form a control group – for example to conduct a randomized controlled trial (RCT) – on the grounds that resources for an intervention are scarce. The argument is that since there are insufficient resources (e.g. money or bureaucratic capacity) to offer an intervention to all eligible people, it is fair to allocate access to the treatment by means of a lottery.
What does it mean to conduct international social science research in an ethical manner? Over the course of one project, a research team studying the effects of a public policy or intervention wrestles with a constant stream of questions. For some questions, there may be no "right" answer, or the "right" answer may depend entirely on context.
Remote sensing has the power to transform and complement traditional approaches to impact evaluation. With the emergence of new technologies and the deployment of advanced sensors aboard satellites, there is an increase in the use of satellite imagery to measure impact in low- and middle-income countries across the world.
For decades, development actors have recognized that good governance and solid country systems are essential for the effective delivery of well-designed, evidence-based interventions. A number of development organizations and initiatives have, therefore, emerged with explicit missions to strengthen the capacity and performance of publicly-mandated political and administrative institutional structures (for e.g., World Bank’s Global Governance practice and USAID Center for Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance)
