Applying for a GrantGrant Writing Made Simple?

Heather Stuart, PhD, Community Health & Epidemiology, Queen’s University

Main Focus of This Session

Grants that are:

– Externally funded clinical, epidemiological, and health services research

– Not randomized controlled clinical trials that are primarily industry funded

Competitions that require the investigator to write a grant proposal that will be reviewed by a:

– Peer review committee composed of scientists

– Merit review committee composed of scientists and decision-makers

Main feature is a highly competitive process

Granting Opportunities

First Tier – Tri-Councils & National Foundations:

• Canadian Institutes of Health Research (Open Grants/Strategic Initiatives)

– Theme-Based Institutes

– Four Cross-cutting “Pillars” (Basic, Clinical, Population, Policy)

• Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council

• National Sciences & Engineering Council

• Canadian Health Services Research Foundation (Knowledge Transfer)

Second Tier:

– Provincial Granting Bodies (Research Foundations)

– Government Departments

Third Tier:

– Special Foundations and Trusts

– Advocacy Organizations (Cancer Society; Schizophrenia Society)

The Ideology of Health Research

Evidence Based Medicine

– Evidence Based Services

– Evidence Based Policy

Accountability and Cost

Usability of Research Findings

Knowledge Transfer

Research Teams

– Multidisciplinary

– Industry Partnerships

Curiosity

Usefulness

The Ideal Review Process

LOI

Peer/Merit Panel

The Real World Review Process

LOI

80%

20%

Grantsmanship

…the art of getting $$$

Purpose of a Letter of Intent

In five pages or less, convince a committee of generic experts to request a full proposal

Rigorous conceptualization of what you want to do…– Interesting idea (& fits with the Call for Proposals)– Methods are appropriate to the question and will give valid results– Study is feasible– Appropriate team

Consider the match between the question and the funder– National granting agencies are interested in nationally relevant findings– Provincial agencies are interested in findings that can be applied in the Province– Local agencies may have specific strategic objectives

Purpose of a Proposal

Convince a committee of generic experts that your team deserves to be funded instead of someone else

Develop a highly persuasive and polished argument that your proposal will make an important contribution

• Critical appraisal of the literature

• Literature syntheses

Address three issues:

• What do we know?

• What don’t we know?

• How will this study make a difference?

Purpose of a Proposal continued…

Use the best methods available, not the method that is most feasible for you

• Study design (name it!)

• Data collection & measures (precision and quality)

• Analysis plan (matched to objectives)

• Ethics

• Budget

• Knowledge transfer plan

Create a strong team (cover all areas of expertise required to complete project)

Insure institutional environment & administrative capacity (research clearances)

The Proposal Must Answer Several Questions

What is your purpose (aims and objectives/hypotheses)

What are we going to learn (that somebody else doesn’t already know)?

Why is it worth knowing?

– How does the study contribute to scientific theory?

– How can the findings be used?

How will we know that the conclusions are valid?

– Strengths

– Biases

– Steps taken to identify and reduce biases

So What? The contribution argument

The research has never been done before

– Be absolutely sure this is a correct statement

– Insure that you address the counter argument that there may be a good reason for that!

Some or much research has been done but you will reassess it in a way that will give new insight

– Systematic errors in current research

– Lower power study designs

– Replications studies don’t automatically justify themselves

A combination of the two (most research)

– Some new material that will help in reassessing the existing field

Scientific Merit

Methodological difficulties will not necessarily kill a good idea at the LOI stage, but…

• Vague, ill-defined, and overly ambitious study designs, or black-box statistical analyses suggest a lack of focus and may raise doubts about the ultimate usability of findings

Reviewers won’t second guess your methods

Statistics don’t make the LOI!

Projects that are heavily dependent for their success on yet-to-be developed study instruments usually cause concern.

Sequential projects are tricky to fund particularly if the first step is vague or difficult to achieve

Projects or Programs!

One question only…

Research programs study a series of questions that build on each other or are interrelated in some way

– For seasoned teams only

– May end up looking like a tangled mess

One question usually translates into one study design and one method of data collection

Know Your Committee

Peer Review or Merit Review? 2-3 Members will be assigned to review your proposal in detail External reviewers may also be solicited to provide written reviews Committee reviewers (and one additional reader) will present your

proposal, their numeric rating, and justify this rating with reference to strengths and weaknesses

Yours will be one of many that the reviewers/readers will have been assigned

Committee members (who have not read your proposal) will ask questions

Committee reviewers must defend their position and/or your proposal

– They need to be able to find details quickly to respond to questions

– They need to be able to direct other committee members to relevant sections to support their explanations

Everyone votes!

Help Your Reviewers

Suitable for a multi-disciplinary team of scholarly individuals who are not knowledgeable about your area considering…– Incomprehension between disciplines – Same words, different meanings– Workload of reviewers and committees– Fairness in judging proposals difficult if they can’t be

understood or if format deviates from the norm

No short forms, acronyms or jargon (NEVER, EVER)

Write clearly & purge spelling or grammatical mistakes

Numbers must add up!

Help Your Reviewers continued…

Follow proposal instructions for length, font, margins, and auxiliary materials

Make the proposal easy to read– Compartmentalize information in sections– Provide navigation through sections with headings

and sub-headings– Headings and sub-headings should tell the story– Leave white space (spacing between headings and

smaller paragraphs) even if this means you have to be more concise

– Avoid wall-to-wall text in an effort to squeeze in every last thought

If it looks appealing, and it is well structured it will be…– easier to read and review– easier to defend, and– convey the impression that the team is well

organized and thoughtful

Re-submission Tips

Expect to be turned down the first time

– Aim for an invitation for resubmission

Address reviewer comments (consider them free consultations)

Don’t express anger, arrogance, or hurt

Seek outside help to improve your proposal

Strengthen your team

Re-conceptualize, re-think & re-focus

Learn from your mistakes!

Policy-relevant results

Communication strategies that foster stakeholder participation, ownership, and uptake are important, and in some cases, essential.

Traditional communication strategies oriented to academic audiences should never be the primary mode of communication of policy relevant results.

There is growing belief in a collaborative model as the best basis for communication.

Involving Stakeholders

Decision-maker/researcher collaborations that do not pre-date the current proposal show that important linkages have not been made, and may not last beyond the instant.

If stakeholders can articulate how results will be used to support policy development or program delivery (such as in letters of support), the peer review committee will be more convinced of the study’s practical importance.

Cookie-cutter letters of support (usually written by the researcher) “from” decision-makers suggest that linkages have not been made, and raise doubts about uptake of results.

“Most proposals fail because they leave reviewers wondering what the applicant will actually do.”

The Art of Writing Proposals, Social Science Research Council, New York http://www.ssrc.org/Artprop.htm

Research funding is for….

Salaries for research assistants, students, and trainees Operating costs of data collection Travel costs for data collection and limited travel for presentation to

conferences Costs of dissemination of results (knowledge transfer)

• Workshops with policy makers• Non-technical publications• Web pages

Don’t pad your budget Add student stipends Expect budget cuts

Research funding is NOT for…

Salaries for Principal Investigators Extensive travel Overhead (rent, furniture, some types of equipment)

– Special capital grants are available through alternate competitions

Other “goodies”

In Summary…

A good proposal is a well crafted logical argument that:

– Your idea will contribute to knowledge or practice

– Your data collection and analysis plan is as strong as it could be

– Your team is the best available to meet the challenge

– You are able to anticipate and address emerging challenges

– Your team can communicate the findings to appropriate audiences in ways that will promote their appropriate use