When you recruited your participants through Dscout, Dscout will handle the compensation of your participants. If you bring your own participants, you’ll be in charge of making sure they are compensated as promised; you can request payments through Dscout or compensate them externally. (Note: for accounts under legacy pricing, Dscout will charge a 10% fee for compensating participants. Check in with your Dscout Account Manager if you're unsure of your account's pricing specifics.)
For diary studies and interview studies, in order to kick off the payment process, you must request payments for your participants. Media surveys and usability tests, however, pay participants automatically upon acceptance of their entry—unless you are inviting your own participants (learn more here).
Requesting payments will ping your Dscout Research Advisor, who will then initiate the payment process for participants in 24-48 hours. Once a payment is requested for a participant, they can expect payment to hit their PayPal account in 7-10 business days. If you've opted to pay participants independently, this feature will not appear in your mission.
How much should I pay participants?
Generally speaking, you should pay participants an equivalent amount to the work and time they’ll be spending on your mission. If you’re not sure how much to pay participants, check out our suggestions for diary studies and interview studies!
When should I pay participants?
For the majority of diary studies and interview studies, we recommend incenting your participants in bulk once the mission has fully concluded. However, if your mission has multiple waves of participants or spans a long period of time, you may consider incenting participants in waves before the mission has fully closed.
How do I initiate payments for participants?
In the Manage table, you'll see a Payment Status column on the far right of the Manage table for both diary studies and interview studies. Before any participants have payments requested, approved, or sent, there will not be any status listed for each participant:
Diary studies
Interview studies
Request payments in bulk
Requesting payments in bulk helps Dscout pay participants more efficiently. Once your mission has concluded, use the methods outlined below to select all of the participants you would like to incent, then click Request Payment from the bulk action toolbar:
Diary studies
Use the checkboxes on the left side of the Manage table to select all of the participants you would like to incent:
Interview studies
Click on a row for each participant you want to incent - the row will turn grey to indicate it has been selected:
Once you click Request Payment, a modal will open that will contain a list of selected participants and the incentive amount to be paid. This incentive amount is pre-populated with the incentive that you entered during the mission setup. However, you’re welcome to adjust the incentive for participants in bulk for everyone listed in the modal, or for individual participants.
Once you click the Review Payments button at the bottom of the modal, another modal will open that will contain a summary of the payments being requested along with the total.
Once you click the Request Payments button at the bottom of the modal, a request will be sent to the Research Advisor working with you on your project, notifying that payments have been requested and are ready for review and approval.
Be sure to review the requested payments in this modal carefully - once you request payments there will only be a short window of time to make adjustments before your Research Advisor approves payments and they become uneditable.
Your page will refresh and you’ll be brought to the Payments tab on the Manage page. Keep an eye out for the confirmation banner at the top of the page:
The Payments tab will now be updated with the following information:
- Total incentives for listed participants will be in the upper right corner. A 10% PayPal processing fee will be added to this total. (Note: the 10% fee only applies to users on accounts under legacy pricing—chat with your Dscout Account Manager if you're unsure of your account's pricing details.)
- Newly requested payments will have a Payment Status of Requested
- Amount of incentive requested
- Date Requested
- Date Sent [when applicable]
Nice job, you have just requested payments for participants!
How do I edit or delete payments for participants?
If you have requested a payment for a participant incorrectly, you have a limited amount of time to make edits to your request. Please note, once the Research Advisor working with you on your project approves these payments, they will be locked for editing.
To edit an individual requested payment, select the pencil icon on the far right of the Payments table and select Edit Amount or Delete Payment:
To bulk edit several requested payments, use the checkboxes on the left side of the Payments table to select all of the participants you would like to edit, then from the bulk action toolbar select Edit Payment or Delete Payment:
How do I check on payments for participants?
Once payments have been requested in a mission, Payment Status will update based on what step of the payment process the participant is in:
Requested indicates that an individual with a researcher seat has requested payments for participants. An email has been sent to a Research Advisor to review and approve. Once a payment has this status, it is still available to edit or delete.
Approved indicates that a Research Advisor has reviewed payments and approved them, kicking off the payment process. Once a payment has this status, it has been locked for editing.
Sent indicates that the payment has been issued to the participant via PayPal.
When are participants paid?
Once a payment is requested for a participant, they can expect payment to hit their PayPal account in 7-10 business days. If participants are having trouble or have payment questions, please refer them to payments@dscout.com.