The Monetary Politics of Research: Research Incentives in Interviews with Low-Income Workers


Azar Masoumi, Carleton University; Roodabeh Dehghani, University of Ottawa; Sarah Orcutt, Carleton University

This paper explores the impact of the use of monetary research incentives (i.e. cash gifts) in qualitative research interviews. As researchers, we often consider research incentives as an effective means of attracting and recruiting participants or, at most, as a deserved and respectful token of appreciation indicating the value of participants’ knowledge and time. In this paper, I examine the far more complex ramifications of the use of research incentives to suggest that monetary incentives can gravely shape the relationship between researchers and participants and, as such, impact the types and volume of data that we generate. This might be particularly true in research with low-income earning participants and when the monetary value of the research incentive offered is equivalent to or higher than the value assigned to participants’ time in the market-driven, hierarchal, and exploitative capitalistic labour market. This paper draws on observations made before, during and after sixty-five interviews with refugee language interpreters across Canada (Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver). The participants were largely racialized, immigrant, precarious and low-income workers whose hourly wages were in most instances lower than the incentive offered for participating in this research. My observations reveal unanticipated and at times surprising patterns arising from the advertised and actual monetary exchange of incentives during the data collection and recruitment processes. In this presentation, I discuss three main patterns that emerged from the use of research incentives in my study with refugee interpreters. First, I suggest that monetary incentives have the capacity to place researchers and low-income participants in relationships of cross-class solidarity, by signifying political allyship. In these instances, the use of incentives strengthens the rapport between researchers and participants and allows more in-depth data collection. Second, I suggest that the use of research incentives may place researchers and participants in relationships resembling those between employers and employees, inadvertently creating an urge in participants to “earn” the value of the incentive by providing “enough” data and “satisfying” the research needs of the researcher. Third, research incentives may be used by participants to resist power imbalances and establish a relation of benevolent and charitable equality between the researchers and participants. In these instances, the participants may, for example, resist receiving the incentive or notify the researcher that the incentive will be donated to appropriate and more deserving populations, hence placing themselves as equal and equally benevolent parties in relation to researchers. These three patterns suggest that administration of monetary incentives is highly meaningful to participants and that research incentives can be interpreted diversely by those recruited to participate in research projects. Whether interpreted as political symbols, quasi-wages or charitable donations, the use of research incentives is productive of significant interpersonal dynamics that inevitably shape the process of data collection and participant-assisted recruitment.

This paper will be presented at the following session: