HUMAN GUINEA PIGS TESTING for dollars

Companies look for an edge before their products are made available to the public.
By TERRY LEE GOODRICH
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
FORT WORTH, Texas -- Dawn Scrofano's opinion matters.
Which refrigerator does she find most aesthetically pleasing? What country tune is her favorite? How does she choose a travel agency?
What is she willing to pay for a bra -- assuming it is comfy, supportive and holds its shape after a few washings?
Scrofano, 58, is among thousands of Americans who, for a freebie, a few bucks or hundreds of dollars, give opinions or try products. Researchers say such "guinea pigs" can give companies an edge before goods and treatments are unleashed on the public.
"There's consumer research on anything you can imagine -- diapers to automobiles to condoms to jeans to baby formula," said Patricia Palmer, office manager of Car-Lene Research in Arlington, Texas.
A challenge
Finding dependable "guinea pigs" is a competitive and sometimes difficult challenge for the country's hundreds of field-research companies, she said.
Tryouts range from taste tests to experimental medical treatments, for which people must sign informed-consent documents about potential risks and benefits before participating.
People who serve as jurors in mock trials can earn $50 to $100 to help lawyers hone their cases before they enter the courtroom, Palmer said.
Individuals with acne, age spots or athlete's foot can earn $50 to $300 for trying potential solutions, say recruiters with Dallas-based Research Plus.
Director Robert Rodriguez, whose films include "Desperado" and "Sin City," has said in interviews that stints as a "lab rat" for a research hospital's experiments helped finance his first full-length film, "El Maria chi," made for $7,000.
Folks who want to attain guinea pig status often must meet a research company's criteria, which isn't limited to sex, age, income, race and education.
Research Plus, for example, is on the lookout for women 25 to 49 who tan easily and have three "pigmented lesions" -- dark spots -- on their faces, are on birth control and use sunscreen on their faces daily.
Those who fill the bill and commit to three visits for a clinical study will learn $75, Research Plus recruiters said.
Some participants, among them chief executives, can command bigger dollars if they help out -- as much as $150 for 20 minutes for a survey or tryout of a product, said Al Scott, manager of Dallas Focus, a consumer-research firm based in Irving, Texas.
Medical professionals who state their preferences on such products as surgical gloves make about $250 an hour, Scott said.
Advertising
Research companies get to them in many ways.
Dallas Focus has run ads, posted notices on bulletin boards of businesses, colleges and resource centers and even turned to Internet chat rooms to build its list of 40,000 potential respondents.
Colleges, teeming with professors and students doing studies, often post notices on campus and do mass e-mailings to faculty and staff.
"You can get college kids to do anything for five bucks," said Kris Chesky, education and research director of the Texas Center for Music & amp; Medicine. "The amount depends on the study and how much money we have, usually through a grant."
Guinea pigs sometimes spread the word to friends on how to sign up and see whether they qualify.
On rare occasions, research recruiters randomly call people listed in the phone book, but "one problem with that is that people think it's too good to be true, so they're not interested," Palmer said. "A lot of times, we can't just use the general population -- like if we're doing a survey on denture cream."
Recruiters are wary of respondents who cross the line from willing to pushy. They can skew results, Scott said.
"There are a lot of people who would love to do this as a job," said Debbie Tharp, an ac count executive with Accurate Research in Grand Prairie. "If we find out they are 'professional respondents,' we flag them."
For higher-paying studies, recruiters often ask for identification or other information to rule out wannabe guinea pigs who fib to fit a profile.
"Something like toenail fungus -- you can't fake that kind of stuff," Palmer said. "But people will try to on things like age."
Car-Lene goes so far as to network among its three offices to winnow out "suspects."
"We'll call each other and say, 'They're headed your way,"' she said.
With sensitive matters, finding respondents can be challenging -- and results iffy.
"For one client, we were hired to go to a Dallas Cowboy football game, and we interviewed men at tailgate parties about erectile dysfunction," Palmer said. "Some of my staff were women 23 and 24 years old, and I had a couple guys, too.
"I don't know how many truthful answers we got."
There are caveats for would-be respondents.
Reported as income
If a person earns more than $400 a year for taking part in studies, it should be reported as income, said Mike Wright, H & amp;R Block district manager.
And participants should read carefully the risks, potential risks and benefits before signing federally required consent forms for clinical trials, said Suzanne Rivera, an assistant vice president for research services at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas.
There's also the "eewww" factor.
Take, for example, the 437 people in a University of Virginia School of Medicine study, who agreed to have cold viruses dripped into their noses -- the better to determine whether the herbal supplement echinacea is an effective way to treat or prevent colds.
They swallowed either echinacea or a placebo, were secluded in hotel rooms for five days and were periodically subjected to "nasal washings" to look for the virus, according to The New England Journal of Medicine.
But the researchers, who determined that echinacea is no help against colds, were grateful for the help.