Research - paying participant expenses and compensating for time: guidance

6. Guide payment rates for compensating participant time

The amounts outlined in this section are a guide to help you decide what is most appropriate to compensate participants for their time. These have been prepared based on:

• the level of commitment, responsibility, and skills or experience asked of participants is recognised
• a review of existing payment practices across the public, third and private sector

The review of existing payment practices highlighted large variations in amounts that participants are paid for their contributions. The guide amounts set out below represent an estimate of current good practice and maintain rates at which participants can currently expect to be paid for their contributions.

There will be circumstances in which you need to adapt the amounts paid or their frequency to accommodate participant needs or the circumstances of the project. If the topic that you are discussing with participants is particularly sensitive you could consider options for recognising this in an increased amount and/or forms of payment – for example, in addition to being paid for their time participants may want a donation to be made to a relevant charity. Scottish Government is not able to make charitable donations on behalf of participants. If participants want a donation to be made to charity, they will need to receive the payment from Scottish Government and make a donation themselves.

If you are undertaking a programme of work that will require repeated input from participants over a period of time, it may be difficult to accurately categorise participant time. This can also be the case for preparation time, for which we have set out some approximate categories below. If you cannot accurately categorise participant time, you should be able to demonstrate that you are aware approximately how much time participants have given over and that as a minimum participants are being paid the Real Living Wage per hour.

Please note that the Real Living Wage is an amount below which payments must not go – it is not intended to be a starting point for payments. This is because our review of existing payment practices demonstrated that in all instances participant contributions are paid at a rate higher than the Real Living Wage, and it is not our intention to reduce what participants receive.

If this participant input is comparable to board membership you could refer to the Scottish Government’s Chairs & Members Daily Fee Framework, which is in the technical guide of each years’ public sector pay policy.

Guide payment rates for each activity:

• participant involvement requires no preparation and equates to approximately one hour of activity or less: approx. £35
• participant involvement requires a small amount of preparation (less than one hour), plus approximately one hour of activity: approx. £50
• participant involvement requires a more substantial amount of preparation (1 – 2 hours) or responsibility, plus approximately one hour of activity: approx. £75
• participant involvement requires no or a small amount of preparation (less than one hour), plus approximately two hours of activity: approx. £80
• participant involvement requires a more substantial amount of preparation (1 – 2 hours) or responsibility, plus approximately two hours of activity: approx. £95
• participant involvement is approximately half a day’s activity, which may require no or a small amount of preparation time (less than one hour): approx. £120
• participants are involved in an all-day meeting or engagement, which may require no or a small amount of preparation time (less than one hour): approx. £180
• participants are involved in an all-day meeting or engagement, plus substantial preparation (2 – 4 hours) and/or level of responsibility: approx. £280
• participants are involved in a diary exercise i.e. logging information on a routine basis over a period of time: approx. £70 per exercise (depending on the time period – suggested minimum payment of £25 per week)

These guide payment rates will be periodically updated to reflect inflation or developments in good practice.

We recognise that some areas of work may currently be using different payment rates that have been agreed with participants and budgeted for. We recommend that government moves to standardise payment rates for participation and research involvement, but understand that this may not be immediately possible.