Middle school means dropping test scores and dwindling self-esteem for many students – but researchers from the faculty of New York University say if all goes as planned, that could change.

The researchers are about to launch a three-year, federally financed study on New York City sixth-graders in an attempt to figure out what factors lead to success for urban middle-school students and what factors exacerbate middle school’s challenges.

“We feel that there could be a lot of improvement in the way schools serve kids in school, as well as outside of school,” one of the principal re searchers, Niobe Way, said. “We want to try to really locate the factors that seem most important from the kids’ perspective. We want to find what’s most important in making a difference and have that feed back into the schools.”

The research team won permission to send parental consent forms home with children at four ethnically and racially diverse public middle schools – one each in East Harlem, Manhattan Valley, Gramercy, and Chinatown. If children participate in the study by filling out hour-long surveys about their experiences with peers, school, and family, they can win a cash incentive of $5. If they participate in an additional 2-hour interview, they can get $20 more. The researchers will also ask teachers about the participating students’ grades and classroom behavior.

Ms. Way said she and her colleagues would ask the same approximately 1,000 children to answer survey questions in the beginning of the seventh and eighth grades, too, to try to track changes in attitude and performance over time.

The sensitive questions and cash incentives troubled some parents.

The father of one of the sixth-graders who were approached, Granville Leo Stevens, said offering cash prizes to children seems “coercive.” Mr. Stevens, who is one of the few parents not allowing his children to participate in the study, also objected to the language of the consent form.

“They acknowledge that the questions are going to be sensitive, difficult, and could be upsetting. Therefore they are making available to the school a list of people the kids could talk to if they become upset, including a clinical psychologist,” he said. “Should a sixth-grader decide they want to talk to a therapist or some stranger?”

Ms. Way said incentives are a common tool that helps researchers attract a wide range of subjects. The Department of Education’s Proposal Review Committee receives between 200 and 250 proposals for studies like this each year. Most studies here do not pay students for their participation, according to the education department.

Ms. Way and a department spokeswoman, Michele McManus, both said it’s important to inform parents that some children might be upset by the questions, even though most children wouldn’t be affected.

Ms. Way said the peer-related questions ask students to gauge the levels of influence their peers have on them and their success in school.

The family-related questions ask children whether they get along with their mother and father and whether they think their parents pay attention to them.

The school influence related questions center on how students perceive “school climate.”

“A question that haunts people working in middle schools is how to help students during that period in particular. It’s a really awful period,” Ms.Way said. “Are we just going to let it happen generation after generation, or are we going to find a way to help students so they don’t torture each other?”