Research participation incentives

As a small token of thanks, we send gifts to research participants for partaking in UX research studies. These can be requested by opening an issue in the UX research project if you do not already have a recruitment issue open.

Impact of incentives

Benefits

• Increases participation recruitment and enrollment rates by making participation more attractive.
• Improves study completion rates and reduces dropout, particularly for longer or more demanding studies.
• Demonstrating respect for participants’ time and effort.

Risks

• May attract professional survey-takers or fraudulent responses.
• Can introduce response bias, resulting in more favorable feedback.
• May skew demographic representation.

How we balance the two

• We offer fair compensation aligning with industry standards.
• We implement screening measures to identify and filter fraudulent responses.
• We consider alternative incentive structures, like promotional games.

Incentive Qualification

We can only process incentives for studies that include UX Researcher involvement

• Studies led by a UX Researcher
• Studies supported or collaborated on by a UX Researcher, regardless of the originating team.

For studies without UX Researcher involvement, we evaluate requests on a case-by-case basis. If you are unsure as to whether you can offer incentives for your study, reach out in the #ux_research_operations prior to offering incentives on your projects.

Incentive Participation Limits & Considerations

All incentives will be paid using a Tremendous gift card via Rally UXR, independently of the tool or methodology of recruitment.

Unsupported Countries in Tremendous, meaning no rewards are available, in the following countries: Cuba, Iran, Myanmar, North Korea, Russia, Syria, Venezuela, and Ukraine. Check out RallyUXR’s Tremendous’ FAQ page or reach out in #ux_research_operations channel in Slack with any questions.

There are some cases outside of country restrictions, such as the United States, where we cannot provide a gratuity for participants. Such as:

• The participant has received $599 (USD) in one calendar year.*
• The participant has indicated that they are a government or non-profit employee.*
• The participant has indicated that they are unable to receive an incentive based on their company policy.*
• *In these cases, the participant can still take part as long as you have confirmation that they are fine to proceed without an incentive. Our core screener questions aim to capture this information.

Incentives Recommendations

User interviews

1:1 or group interviews, in person or remote, where a chat with our team will be conducted.

Interview Length	Incentive
30 Minutes	$60
45 Minutes	$90
60 Minutes	$120
75 Minutes	$150
90 Minutes	$180
2 Hours	$240

Longs and Specialized Surveys

Surveys for specific areas or high priority for the company. Please be aware that those special types of surveys with incentives need previous approval from UX Research Management or Senior UX Operation Specialists.

Survey Length	Incentive
Up to 10 Minutes	$15
10 - 15 Minutes	$20
15 - 20 Minutes	$25/30
25 - 30 Minutes	$30

Unmoderated usability test

Any type of unmoderated task performed per our participants, independently of the tool.

Test Length	Incentive
Up to 10 Minutes	$20
10 - 15 Minutes	$25
15 - 20 Minutes	$30
20 - 25 Minutes	$35
25 - 30 Minutes	$40
+ 30 Minutes	$60

Diary Studies

Case by case evaluation, since time commitment, number of entries in the project, depth and specific knowledge can affect the ideal incentive for the project.

Promotional Games

Used for surveys, card sorts, and tree tests will often have a Promotion Game attached e.g. Opportunity to win 1 of 3 $30 (or equivalent currency) Tremendous Gift cards. However, this is not always the case and should always be confirmed on your recruitment issue. On a few occasions our longer surveys are incentivized per complete. This must be approved by the Senior UX Research Operations Specialist or UX Research Manager.

If you are planning to recruit users through a promotional game or contest, please review the following information in the handbook and consult with our legal team where required. For information on contacting legal, please refer to how to reach us us in the Legal Team handbook page. Engaging our legal team for approval and creating an incentive request must be completed before conducting research involving promotional games or contests.

Rescheduling and cancelling sessions

To preserve the best experience possible to our participants, cancelling sessions is our last resource. Trying to reschedule or even have a teammate run the session on your behalf is a better solution than cancelling it.

• Valid reasons to cancel sessions:
  • The moderator is on sick leave and no one can run the session on their behalf.
  • The project was completely cancelled.
• Not valid reasons to cancel sessions:
  • Research numbers were fulfilled.
  • DRI is busy with a busy calendar and prioritises other meetings over already scheduled sessions.
  • The participant’s 1st language is not english/has an accent.
• Valid reasons to cut a sessions short:
  • The participant is rude or behaves inappropriately during the session.
  • The participant does not speak English.
  • Participant or interviewer has connection or sound issues*
  • The participant does not match the desired profile.

Please note if you need to cancel or reschedule the session, you will still need to process the gratuities in some cases.

Notice Period Given	% of Incentive To Pay Out
During the session	100%
<= 24 hours ahead of the session	100%
<= 36 hours ahead of the session	50%
> 36 hours ahead of the session	0%

For Cancellation or Reschedulling best practice, see the Resources for Research DRIs page

Incentive Fulfillment Timeline

Requests for incentives should be fulfilled at least twice per week so that users receive their gift promptly after participating in research. It’s important to maintain a customer first mindset when interacting with participants - receiving their gift is the end of the research cycle, and another touchpoint in their relationship with GitLab.

If being sent by ReOps - we will use a general template to thank participants. If the research DRI is sending the incentive, they should feel free to customize the note and make it more personable to thank the participant for their time.

Participants who take part through 3rd party tools, will have their incentives processed the next business day by the UX Research Operations Specialist - only if the UX Research DRI on the project has marked the participants as attended.

Incentives budget tracking and funding

The accounting team funds Tremendous via RallyUXR with a lump sum amount from the pre-approved research incentives budget twice a year (Q1, February and Q3, August). A ZIP req is opened by the ReOps team with the pre-approved invoice amount for processing and should be done at least 4 weeks before the funds are needed (within the same quarter).

We issue incentives from that prepaid amount.