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A critical element in implementing a compensation scheme including non-monetary incentives (NMIs) is recognizing that preferences vary widely across service members. There are at least three sources of variability: variability across population classes (e.g., preferences vary across Services, professional communities, rank/pay grade, etc.) ; variability across individuals within a population class (e.g., preferences vary across people in similar circumstances) ; and variability across NMI packages for a particular individual (e.g., values for an individual NMI may depend on the package of NMIs offered). Surveys across different military communities, ranks, and years of service, show the difficulty of identifying any NMI that has significant value for even 50% of the active duty force. At the same time, approximately 80% of the surveyed service members expressed a significant positive value for at least one NMI. As a result, one-size-fits-all incentive packages will not be nearly as effective as more individually tailored incentive packages. This paper discusses variability in service member NMI preferences and outlines an approach to implementing personalized NMI packages in military compensation through a sealed-bid reverse auction, where service members select individual NMIs from a "cafeteria-style" menu of options. ; Department of the Navy, Research, Modeling, and Analysis Division ; Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited. ; Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.

Monetary payment to research Rs, as in such research as "Physician Response Rates to a Telephone Survey" (see SA 30:1/82L9599), is criticized as inappropriate; a distinction is made between research that is in the "public or professional interest," as this is, & private, profit-based research in which such payment is more acceptable. Possible use of one of the exceptions to this guideline permitted by the General Administrative Manual of the Dept of Health & Human Services, if "the agency demonstrates it cannot obtain valid results without compensation," is noted & censured on the ground that the 42% refusal rate of MDs to participate in a 20- to 30-minute telephone interview may reflect an unwillingness on the part of the interviewers to give maximum effort to obtaining unpaid interviews when they knew they had the backup option of offering payment. In Response to Sheatsley and Loft, Walter J. Gunn & Isabelle N. Rhodes point out that interviewers were never given the choice of offering incentives to MDs who had been selected in advance to be in the "no incentives" group; thus criticism in this area is invalid. The need for methods to obtain MD research cooperation in emergency situations, where there is little time for getting clearance through professional associations, is stressed. D. Abrahams.

The stalling of COVID-19 vaccination rates threatens public health. To increase vaccination rates, governments across the world are considering the use of monetary incentives. Here we present evidence about the effect of guaranteed payments on COVID-19 vaccination uptake. We ran a large preregistered randomized controlled trial (with 8286 participants) in Sweden and linked the data to population-wide administrative vaccination records. We found that modest monetary payments of 24 US dollars (200 Swedish kronor) increased vaccination rates by 4.2 percentage points (P = 0.005), from a baseline rate of 71.6%. By contrast, behavioral nudges increased stated intentions to become vaccinated but had only small and not statistically significant impacts on vaccination rates. The results highlight the potential of modest monetary incentives to raise vaccination rates.