Non-integrated Costs Increase Effectiveness of Incentives

The investigators will test the hypothesis that the control (no incentive) condition will have the lowest vaccination rate, the main task condition will have a significantly higher vaccination rate while the indirect condition will have the highest vaccination rate.

Participants will be randomly assigned to one of the three message conditions and their vaccination records obtained from the university Occupational Health Department.

Study Overview

• Status: Completed
• Conditions: Control - No Incentive for Flu Vaccine; Direct Incentive; Indirect Incentive
• Intervention / Treatment: Behavioral: Email Message; Behavioral: Incentive for Vaccination; Behavioral: Incentive for completing a short survey

Detailed Description

The investigators will send e-mails to a complete mailing list of faculty and staff at a university. Each recipient will be randomly assigned to one of three conditions: control, main task incentive or indirect incentive. Our main dependent variable will be whether or not participants decide to get vaccinated. The investigators will obtain their actual vaccination records from the university Occupational Health Department.

Within the e-mail message, participants will indicate whether or not they intend to get vaccinated. Intention serves as an indirect dependent outcome. Upon clicking to indicate their intention, participants are redirected to a page which gives further instructions on how to proceed.

Participants who vaccinate will be asked to complete a brief follow-up questionnaire to evaluate their experience with vaccination and (for those offered and incentive) to provide contact information to receive their payment.

• Study Type: Interventional
• Enrollment (Actual): 12531
• Phase: Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

Study Locations

• United States
  • New Jersey
    • New Brunswick, New Jersey, United States, 08901
      • Rutgers University

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: 18 years to 100 years (Adult, Older Adult)
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: Yes
• Genders Eligible for Study: All

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

• Must be faculty or staff at Rutgers University.

Exclusion Criteria:

-

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

Design Details

• Primary Purpose: Prevention
• Allocation: Randomized
• Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
• Masking: Single

Number of Arms

3

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm	Intervention / Treatment
Active Comparator: Control; Participants will receive an E-mail Message encouraging them to get vaccinated, and asking them to indicate if they intend to do so and to complete a brief questionnaire after vaccination.	Behavioral: Email Message; Participants will randomly receive an e-mail message about the availability of free flu vaccines.
Experimental: Direct Incentive; Participants will receive an E-mail Message encouraging them to get vaccinated, and asking them to indicate if they intend to do so and to complete a brief questionnaire after vaccination. They are offered an Incentive for Vaccination ($5 Amazon Gift Card).	Behavioral: Email Message; Participants will randomly receive an e-mail message about the availability of free flu vaccines.; Behavioral: Incentive for Vaccination; $5 gift card offered for vaccination
Experimental: Indirect Incentive; Participants will receive an E-mail Message encouraging them to get vaccinated, and asking them to indicate if they intend to do so and to complete a brief questionnaire after vaccination. They are offered an Incentive for completing a short survey ($5 Amazon Gift Card).	Behavioral: Email Message; Participants will randomly receive an e-mail message about the availability of free flu vaccines.; Behavioral: Incentive for completing a short survey; $5 gift card offered for completing s short survey after one gets vaccinated

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Number of people vaccinated	Measure the number of people who got vaccinated in the Fall 2017 semester at a large state university. We will collect vaccination records from the university Occupational Health Department	Up to 5 months

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Intention to get vaccinated	Participants will receive an e-mail with our main treatment manipulations. In each e-mail they will be able to indicate whether or not they want to get vaccinated. We will use this measure as a second dependent variable.	Up to 5 months

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: Carnegie Mellon University
• Collaborators: University of Pennsylvania; Rutgers University
• Investigators: Principal Investigator: George Loewenstein, PhD, Carnegie Mellon University

Publications and helpful links

General Publications

• Halpern SD, French B, Small DS, Saulsgiver K, Harhay MO, Audrain-McGovern J, Loewenstein G, Brennan TA, Asch DA, Volpp KG. Randomized trial of four financial-incentive programs for smoking cessation. N Engl J Med. 2015 May 28;372(22):2108-17. doi: 10.1056/NEJMoa1414293. Epub 2015 May 13.
• Chapman GB, Li M, Colby H, Yoon H. Opting in vs opting out of influenza vaccination. JAMA. 2010 Jul 7;304(1):43-4. doi: 10.1001/jama.2010.892. No abstract available.

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start (Actual): September 20, 2017
• Primary Completion (Actual): January 20, 2018
• Study Completion (Actual): January 20, 2018

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: January 24, 2018
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: April 23, 2018
• First Posted (Actual): April 25, 2018

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (Actual): April 25, 2018
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: April 23, 2018
• Last Verified: April 1, 2018

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Keywords: vaccination; incentives; field study
• Other Study ID Numbers: P30AG0345462017

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

• Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?: YES
• IPD Plan Description: De-identified data (condition, vaccination status) will be shared on a site such as Open Science Framework
• IPD Sharing Time Frame: 12/31/2019, indefinitely
• IPD Sharing Access Criteria: open access
• IPD Sharing Supporting Information Type: ANALYTIC_CODE

Drug and device information, study documents

• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product: No
• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product: No