Participant compensation

How to provide your participants with money or course credit for experiment participation
Author

NZ

Published

September 23, 2024

Participants can always be compensated with course credit (=Versuchsscheine) if they are psychology students. They can choose between course credit or money only if the project is funded through a grant (please discuss with Natalia in due time if this is the case).

Course credit

  1. Download the form available on the Insitute’s sharepoint and fill it out with your study’s data (study name, your name, supervisor’s name).
  2. Print some forms (number equal to the number of participants you will test)
  3. Put a round stamp on each form. Round stamps are available at the secretary’s office or in the Testothek (Universitätsplatz 2, top floor)
  4. Once a subject finished the experiment, fill out the rest of the data, put a date, sign, and give it to the subject.

Reimbursement

Reimbursement is done via the bank transfer by the University to participants’ bank accounts. Therefore, it is useful to warn them that it will take some weeks until they receive the money. To start the reimbursement process, follow these steps.

  1. Download the example excel sheet
  2. Fill out one row per participant, entering information into EVERY field that is nonempty in the excel sheet (you can create your own dedicated template):
    • Betrag
    • Text (study name): The study name can not exceed a certain number of symbols, so please keep it short (fMRI studies can use their MRI lab abbreviations: pacmond, clav, deka, etc.)
    • Name CPD: first and last name
    • Strasse CPD: Street address of the participant
    • Ort CPD: City where participant lived
    • PLZ CPD: postal code of participant’s address
    • Land CPD: Country where participant lived
    • Bankland CPD: country of the participant’s bank (can be inferred from IBAN)
    • BIC CPD: Participant’s bank BIC-code. Note: Although it may seem meaningless, you need to get both IBAN and BIC from you subject (even if they try to convince you otherwise). This is important for the university.
    • IBAN CPD: Participant’s IBAN of the account number where the money should be transferred
      • Note: Although it may seem meaningless, you need to get bot IBAN and BIC from you subject (even if they try to convince you otherwise).
      • Attention! The bank information should be 100% correct, otherwise there is an administrative disaster. Therefore, triple-check with participants.
    • Innenauftrag: Ask Natalia for the correct value of the Innenauftrag field, since this varies from study to study.
    • Leave the fields “Zahlweg” and “Kostenstelle” empty
  3. Once you collect a sufficient number of participants, or once every 1-2 weeks, send this sheet to the secretary’s office of the general psychology section (NOT the institute’s secretary!), and they will take care of the rest.