Getting paid to take part in health research: the complete guide

Paid health research is one of the few ways your own experience of a condition becomes useful to someone other than you. It is also, from the outside, quite hard to read. The adverts look similar whether they come from a university, a market research agency, or something you should walk away from.

This guide explains what taking part actually involves in the UK, what the money looks like, and how to tell the difference.

Key points

• A legitimate study explains who is running it, what happens and how payment works.
• You can ask questions before agreeing to take part.
• Your consent should be informed, specific and voluntary.

What counts as a paid research study

Three quite different things get called the same name.

Surveys and interviews. You answer questions online, or you talk to a researcher for half an hour or an hour. Nothing is done to your body. This is the most common kind by a long way, and it is what FeFe runs.

Product and device testing. You are sent something to try, usually a consumer health or beauty product, and you report back. Sometimes there is a follow-up call.

Clinical trials. A treatment or intervention is tested on you. Clinical trials of medicines are subject to specific UK regulation and approvals, and usually involve medical eligibility and safety checks. [1]

The first two are what most people mean when they search for paid research studies. The rest of this guide is mostly about them, with a note where trials differ.

What it pays

There is no fixed rate, but there is a normal range. Most UK research teams work from the real Living Wage and pay pro rata for the time the task takes. A twenty minute survey at that rate lands around four to six pounds. Longer interviews, diary studies and anything asking about a painful or private subject usually pay more, and should.

Be wary in both directions. A pound for half an hour is not worth your time. Two hundred pounds for a ten minute survey is not a research study.

Full detail is in how much do paid research studies pay in the UK.

How to tell a real study from a scam

A legitimate study can always tell you five things before you agree to anything: who is running it, what the study is about, what will happen to your answers, how long it will take, and how you withdraw. If any of those is missing, that is the answer.

The clearest red flag is money moving the wrong way. Real research never asks you to pay a registration fee, never needs your card number, and never asks for a bank login. Payment details for receiving money are normal. Payment details for sending money are not.

The full checklist is in how to tell if a paid research study is legitimate.

What happens to your answers

Health information is special category data under UK GDPR. Processing it requires both an Article 6 lawful basis and an Article 9 condition, such as explicit consent or the research condition where its requirements are met. [2]

In practice a well-run study separates your answers from your identity. The researcher sees the answers. The platform that paid you sees that you completed something, not what you said. You can ask what is held about you and you can ask for it to be deleted.

More on this in what happens to your health data when you take part in research.

Why women's health studies keep asking the same questions

If you sign up to more than one study you will notice the screening questions repeat. When your last period started. Whether you take hormonal contraception. Which treatments you have tried and when.

That is not carelessness. Most research panels hold no health information at all, so every study has to ask from scratch and then turn most people away. FeFe screens once, on the profile you fill in when you join, and then matches you to studies you already qualify for. It is the same information, asked once instead of ten times.

Being a good participant

You are not being tested, but the quality of your answers is what the whole thing rests on.

• Answer the screening questions honestly, including when the honest answer disqualifies you. Getting into a study you do not fit wastes your time and quietly damages the results.
• Say "I am not sure" when you are not sure. It is a real answer and researchers want it.
• Give the free text boxes a proper sentence. That is usually the part that changes what a researcher understands.
• If a question upsets you, stop. Studies about miscarriage, fertility, pain and diagnosis delay can land harder than you expect when you are actually in the middle of them.

Getting started

If you want to take part in women's health, beauty and wellness research, you can join FeFe as a participant. It is free, you keep the full reward on every study, and you choose which ones to take.

You can also read what other women are asking on the question wall.

References

1. NHS. Clinical trials.
2. Information Commissioner’s Office. What are the conditions for processing special category data?