Survey Methodology
Participant pricing
Also called: participation discount, participant rate, submitter discount
A discounted price (or sometimes free access) offered to employers who submit data to a salary survey.
Most major compensation surveys offer two prices: a non-participant price (typically the full retail rate) and a participant price (typically 30–60% lower). To qualify for the participant rate, the employer submits their compensation data during the survey's data-collection window.
Participation has two costs: HR-team time to prepare the submission, and the small risk that your data could be triangulated by a competitor (mitigated by safe-harbor protections that suppress small-cell data).
Participation has three benefits: lower price, better-quality benchmarks (your job matches inform the methodology), and a validation check (the survey vendor will surface discrepancies in your submission, helping you catch your own data issues).
Most large employers participate in the surveys they buy. Smaller employers often don't have the HR bandwidth and pay the non-participant rate.