Background
The Allegheny County Department of Human Services (DHS) regularly collects feedback from community members who use DHS and DHS-funded programs. Collecting and using this feedback demonstrates a commitment to continuous quality improvement, increasing trust among service users. DHS also administers broad-scale research surveys that gather data to help the Department conduct rigorous program evaluations. Recognizing the time and effort required for clients to participate in these activities, and the value of having higher, representative response rates, DHS has a standard practice of providing monetary incentives.
Key Takeaways
The data brief discusses the challenges of and solutions to scaling monetary incentives at large organizations, and it provides summary analytics about DHS’s incentive spending from Fall 2020 through December 2024.
- In Fall 2022, DHS invested in two key partnerships, including a digital gift card platform, that has resulted in collecting more client feedback and human subjects research than ever before.
- From 2020 to 2023, the number of clients who were given a gift card for their participation in data collection increased by nearly one order of magnitude each year.
- Offering incentives increased participation rates, improved sample representativeness, and reduced the amount of staff time needed for data collection.
- While incentives encourage participation with research activities, gift card redemption is largely influenced by the gift card amount; only 21% of gift cards $5 or less are redeemed while 91% of gift cards $30 or more are redeemed.
- The top 3 brands for which participants choose to redeem their digital gift cards are Amazon (29.8%), Mastercard (9.5%) and Visa (9.2%).
Why This Matters and What’s Next
Client feedback helps DHS and its providers identify what services are working well and what are not meeting clients’ needs. Offering incentives increases participation rates, and higher participation rates lead to a more representative dataset to inform public policy decisions. Using technology-based business processes to collect data and process incentives allows DHS to do this at scale across nearly 500 contracted providers and over 200,000 clients served annually. Having extensive and robust feedback from the public ensures that residents are active partners in shaping service systems — and that those service systems are responsive, equitable and reflect the needs and priorities of the community.
Questions or Feedback?
We welcome your questions and suggestions. To share feedback, you can reach us at DHSResearch@alleghenycounty.us. If you’d like to stay informed, consider signing up for our newsletter. To learn how to use DHS data in your research, please visit our Requesting Data page. Thank you for your time and interest. Your engagement helps shape and improve how we share data that matters.