Providing compensation to clinical research participants to offset the costs associated with participation is often suggested as a way to improve recruitment and retention. However, relatively little is known about the landscape of compensation in clinical research. This study implemented a text mining approach to identify compensation across 7,648 U.S.-based clinical research studies, using informed consent files available in ClinicalTrials.gov. Studies in the sample had registered start dates between 1994-2025, with 88.4% starting in 2015 or later. Overall, the text mining approach identified 4,548 studies (59.5%) as offering compensation to participants. The percentage of studies offering compensation varied between intervention types (10.2%-84.2%), trial phases (34.8%-63.3%), and health conditions being studied (22%-90.6%). These results highlight the need for additional research into the use of compensation in clinical research studies, particularly in the context of its effectiveness to improve patient recruitment and retention.
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https://aspe.hhs.gov/reports/participate-clinical-trials
https://aspe.hhs.gov/reports/financial-stress-clinical-trial