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July 25, 2025
By Tristan Horrom
VA Research Communications
The generosity of study participants reflects an ethos of service that is common among Veterans, rooted in their military experience, and inspiring to all those who work in the VA system.
One of the hallmarks of this nation’s Veterans is a commitment to service, both to the country and to their fellow Veterans. Many Veterans continue their public service by volunteering to participate in VA’s clinical research studies, which make the medical discoveries and innovations that help improve the health and well-being of their fellow Veterans.
Now, a new VA study highlights just how generous Veteran research participants can be. When offered a financial incentive for participating in the survey, more than half of the participants took this study’s unique opportunity to donate the money to a Veteran-focused service organization instead.
“On the 100th anniversary of VA research, this unanticipated finding felt particularly poignant,” wrote study authors Dr. Donna Zulman of the VA Center for Innovation and Implementation in Palo Alto, California, and Dr. Matthew Maciejewski of the VA Center of Innovation to Accelerate Discovery and Practice Transformation in Durham, North Carolina. “The generosity of study participants reflects an ethos of service that is common among Veterans, rooted in their military experience, and inspiring to all those who work in the VA system.”
The researchers conducted a survey on social risks with a national sample of more than 3,000 Veterans. Veterans were offered a $10 incentive to participate, a common research practice to boost study numbers. During development of the survey, a Veteran engagement group suggested offering respondents the option of donating their compensation to an organization that supports Veterans.
Coupled with Veteran generosity, this option raised $17,200 in donations for Disabled American Veterans (DAV). Even among Veterans who reported having a financial strain in the survey, a third of them still chose to donate.
The findings demonstrate Veterans’ commitment to serving others who have served, said the researchers. Veterans also reported they are motivated to participate in research, Veteran engagement groups, and other activities that contribute to the benefit of Veterans and their communities.
Veteran volunteers are essential to the VA’s research enterprise. Thousands of Veterans volunteer to participate in research studies each year, and more than a million Veterans have signed up for VA’s Million Veteran Program, the largest genetic research database in the world.
This study’s findings also highlight the value of offering a donation option to encourage research participation.
“Just as the scientific advances achieved through Veterans’ engagement in research benefit the broader population, the actions of Veterans in this study might inspire VA and non-VA researchers to offer donation as an incentive in future studies,” concluded the researchers.
The study results appeared in the journal JAMA Network Open.
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