Sharing Research Knowledge Before the Study
Before actually entering the field or initiating an experimental-type, naturalistic, or mixed-method inquiry, you most likely will have to commit your specific research ideas to paper in the form of a text document. This document, referred to as a proposal, is simply a text or record that describes why and how you “propose” to carry out your research idea. The document details the rationale and the main thinking and action processes you intend to implement. Sections contained in the document typically include the significance of your idea, justification for the need for your research using supportive literature, a statement as to your specific research question or query, specific hypotheses if applicable, your procedures, the analytical plan, ethical considerations, and the informed consent process. This chapter discusses the importance of sharing your research thinking and action processes before entering the field or conducting the inquiry and describes basic approaches.
Reasons for sharing before field engagement
Preparing a document or proposal before engaging in research actions is an important aspect of the research process for several reasons. First, as we discussed in Chapter 12, for any type of research study, you will need to submit a written proposal to a human subject board or research committee of your institution. That is, before starting any type of study, institutional review board (IRB) approval for the conduct of the study must be obtained; otherwise, you are not legally and ethically permitted to implement your research plan. Large health systems, academic institutions, and health and human service settings that have significant research volume usually have their own human subject review committee and establish their own formats for submitting a proposal. Therefore it is important to contact the research office at your institution to secure its specific instructions for writing and submitting a proposal to its office for their review.
Another important reason to prepare a proposal before starting an inquiry is to obtain financial support for the research activity. Most research, regardless of the research tradition and even if it is a pilot study, requires resources to implement. Think of the amount of time and effort that may be required of you and an interviewer, statistical consultant, or others to conduct your study. Consider the costs of materials you may need (e.g., audio or video machine, paper, disks, special computer software programs) or the costs associated with mailings and telephoning. Additionally, you may want to provide a small “honorarium” to study participants as a way of thanking them for their time and effort, a common practice in research. Thus, writing a proposal to request a small or large amount of funds to support the conduct of a study may be critical. Even a small amount (e.g., $150 to $500) can help offset the costs associated with conducting a range of studies and data collection actions, such as conducting a systematic and comprehensive literature review, doing naturalistic or experimental-type meta-analysis, forming a focus group, extracting information from charts, and testing the acceptability of a battery of standardized tests. There are numerous places to seek funding for large or small amounts, including sources internal to your department (e.g., student research funds), referred to as intramural funding programs, and external sources (e.g., federal agency, health foundation), referred to as extramural funding.
Yet another important reason to write a proposal is to have a record of the specific thinking and action processes you plan to implement that you can then share with colleagues to obtain their feedback. Obtaining feedback about your research plan before implementation is an important aspect of the research process. It helps to sharpen your thinking and actions and place your efforts within the larger context of the scientific and consumer communities. Also, a documented plan can serve as your own reference or guide as you proceed with a study.
At some point in your student or professional life and involvement in the world of research, you will need to write a research proposal. Preparing a proposal is not really as intimidating as it may sound. The document can be as brief as 2 to 5 pages for an IRB submission or as lengthy as 40 or more pages when submitting a detailed research plan for consideration of funding from an external agency. Proposal writing is a technical skill. As such, proposals follow particular formats and structures that can be easily learned and applied.
Because committing your ideas to text in the form of a proposal is part of the thinking processes in research, this chapter describes the basic elements of preparing a proposal to document a study and to seek funding. Many types of proposals are written to obtain funding from external sources, such as those written to conduct a conference, purchase equipment, train students or health and human service professionals, and evaluate demonstration projects or service programs. Each type of proposal follows a different format. In this chapter, however, we discuss writing a proposal for research, whether for an experimental-type, naturalistic, or mixed-method study.
A research proposal to secure funding from a particular source is referred to as a “grant.” The process of identifying a suitable funding source and writing the proposal is referred to as grantsmanship. A research grant will usually provide monies for salary support for the investigator and his or her team, the specific materials needed to carry out the research (e.g., supplies, telephone calls, mailings), data analysis, and travel to professional meetings. Because obtaining money is part of the reality of being involved in research, we start by describing key aspects of grantsmanship.
Where to seek support for a research idea
Obtaining funds to support your research activity is one of the main reasons to prepare a research proposal, particularly for large-scale studies or studies requiring specialized or costly equipment or procedures. Finding a funding source for your research idea can be challenging. The funding environment for research is constantly changing, and the priorities and interests of various sources of funding are always being modified in response to advances in health care, new developments in knowledge, societal trends, and congressional activity. Therefore, finding the right funder for your particular research idea may take time and require knowledge of multiple sources that provide information about a wide range of funding opportunities. In this section, we outline some of the major sources of funding for health and human services research.
Where can you find a potential funding source? Your own department, professional organization, student association, reference librarian, and the Internet are all worthwhile places to begin your search for support of your research idea. For example, your own department may have a research fund to support pilot efforts of faculty, students, or professionals; this should be the first place you inquire. Many professional associations also provide small grants, which may range from $2,000 to $50,000 or more, and predoctoral and postdoctoral research stipends. There are also special listservs and Internet-based grant-seeking programs that you can join that will help identify sources of funding based on keywords that reflect your research interests.
Funders usually post on their Web pages and in newsletters what is known as a call for proposals, which is a notice of an opportunity to submit a proposal on a specific topic of interest to an agency or funder. Agencies publish announcements describing a problem area and inviting interested parties to propose ways to investigate all or part of the problem. These announcements vary considerably in the detail used to describe the research they would like to see submitted. The federal government tends to provide explicit descriptions of what needs to be included in grant proposals. Foundations and private companies tend to be much more general as to the format for a research proposal.
The U.S. government remains the largest source of research money available for health-related issues. It is a huge enterprise comprising an array of departments, agencies, institutes, bureaus, and centers. Although there are pockets of money for health and human service professionals throughout the federal government, two departments have a focused interest in health and human services: the Public Health Service within the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), which supports the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the U.S. Department of Education. Within the Department of Education, the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitation Services (OSERS) has a variety of programs of potential interest to the health professions, as does the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR). We have also found that the Department of Agriculture funds research related to environmental health, nutrition, and exercise and the Department of Defense is a source to consider for veterans' health. Internationally, there are numerous funds that support inquiry, with eligibility for the most part depending on the countries or regions applying.
Private foundations are another source of funding for health and human service research. More than 70,000 foundations in the United States offer grants to individuals, institutions, and other not-for-profit groups. The four types are independent foundations, company-sponsored foundations, operating foundations, and community foundations. Generally, only the first two types provide research support to independent investigators, although all four types offer potential funding opportunities.
Finally, industry such as drug companies, equipment manufacturers, automobile manufacturers, and companies related to or concerned with public health, specific areas of health, and health care often have money available for small research projects. Many large corporations have funds for research projects that advance their interests. A main interest of companies in the private sector is often the testing or evaluation of their own products. For example, an equipment manufacturer may want a new assistive device evaluated for its utility and acceptability, or a company may pay for the development and evaluation of a health-education video that promotes their product.
We recommend that you examine the Web sites of potential funding sources to gain an understanding of the types of research questions and queries they seek to fund and to identify the particular format they require for a proposal submission. As you search for appropriate funding sources, you may discover that your research idea is not of interest to agencies. This does not mean that your idea is without merit, but it does indicate that you will need to rethink or rework your idea to match socially and congressionally sanctioned public health concerns that are embraced by funding agencies. You may find that your research idea is too advanced or “futuristic” to be of interest to funders or that although it is of great interest to your own profession, it is not considered significant from a broad public health perspective. Thus, it is necessary to cast a wide net and look for funding from a range of sources. Of particular importance in finding a match between a funder and your idea are the values of the funder. Make sure that you read the call for proposals, and all other information including the agency mission, previously funded work, publications, and materials carefully and critically to ensure a fit between the values of your research and the funder's mission.
Consider this example. Suppose you are interested in investigating the extent to which HIV prevention for adolescents is improved through a program of free condom distribution along with instructions for use. You would not apply to a funder that does not approve of premarital sexual activity or birth control to seek funding for such a project.
Who reads a proposal?
When you write a research proposal, it will be read and evaluated by a particular audience, referred to as the reviewer. The reviewer(s) of your proposal may be your research professor; your peers; the head of your clinical or academic department; a diverse committee of consumers, providers, and researchers who review for an institution's human subject review board; or a group of scientists or scholars from various disciplines. As such, you can be assured that the persons who review your proposal will come from diverse backgrounds and have various levels of exposure and knowledge of the phenomenon you seek to investigate, as well as their own professional standards as to what constitutes scientific inquiry.
When you submit a proposal to your professor, department, or institution or to an external source such as a funding agency, reviewers will evaluate it using various criteria. Usually, the evaluative criteria will be specified in your syllabus or in a call for proposals. For the most part, reviewers are asked to evaluate whether your research plan contributes to knowledge building, is feasible, is scientifically valid, and is worth the costs that you have budgeted. Some reviews are qualitative, and you will receive written comments, whereas others are quantitative and you will receive a score. Writing a proposal is a purposeful process and as such must be carefully crafted to match the evaluative criteria and the background and knowledge base of the audience or reviewer. Thus, before writing down your ideas, it is important to know who evaluates your proposal and the evaluative criteria that will be applied.
Suppose you need to submit a proposal to obtain funding from an agency. By going on the Internet, you identify several potential funding sources that may be appropriate or relevant to your research interest. In reading the directions for proposal development and submission on their Web pages, you learn that one agency emphasizes “innovation,” whereas another agency is concerned with “dissemination” of research findings. Although your basic research idea may not change, in writing the proposal, you would emphasize different aspects of your research plan on the basis of the evaluative criteria and specific interest of the target audience.
In writing a proposal, you also need to define your key concepts carefully and articulate your ideas clearly so that they can be adequately understood by reviewers from diverse disciplines and life experiences. A concept that is core to your discipline may not be relevant to another or may be defined very differently.
Consider the term “disability.” In most health care agencies that provide services, disability is defined as a bodily impairment that influences a major daily function for a prolonged period of time. However, in other disciplines such as contemporary disability studies, the term may refer to the social, economic, and environmentally designed barriers to function, having nothing to do with an embodied diagnosis.1 Defining terms and ensuring that your definitions are consistent with the interests of the funding agency are key to success in grant seeking.
Thus, in writing a proposal, you need to adapt to the lens of your reviewers and define and reference all key terms. In this respect, preparing a proposal is similar to sharing information in the form of a report, which we discuss in Chapter 22. That is, as in report writing, constructing a proposal is purposeful and targets a particular reader or audience, in this case the reviewer.
Writing a research proposal
The principles and processes involved in writing a proposal are similar to those for sharing information and reporting your study at its completion (see Chapter 22).
Basic Principles
There are five basic principles for writing a research proposal: clarity, precision, parsimony, coherence, and attention to structure. Each of these should guide how you write, regardless of the specific purpose of the proposal.1
By “clarity,” we mean that the proposal needs to be easily understood regardless of the reviewer. If a report is vague, verbose, or overly complex in writing style, your research ideas will not be successfully conveyed. By “precision,” we mean explicating each thinking and action plan. As long as you do not exceed the page limit imposed by the funder, err on the side of detail. Consider adding tables, illustrations, and timelines, if allowable, to explicate further your thinking and action. Precision also applies to appearance, grammar, and spelling. Be consistent in headings and subheadings, be vigilant in checking and correcting grammatical errors and spelling, and create a document that is easily legible.
Parsimony is another important principle that should guide your proposal writing. Even when detailing your thinking and action, if the proposal is too lengthy or too wordy, it will be difficult for reviewers to understand your key points. So it is important to be “pithy” and keep your proposal to the point. A proposal is written using simple, direct statements. It is not a place to experiment with a creative writing style or prose.
Coherence, the fourth principle, refers to consistency among and within sections of your proposal (content and format). This element if often overlooked but critical, because you do not want to contradict yourself.
For example, in a proposal to conduct research on a cognitive-behavioral approach to treating depression, if you define depression exclusively as a chemical imbalance, you would not have a rationale for your intervention. Or suppose you plan to travel by airplane to disseminate findings of your work. If you do not include a budget item for out-of-state travel, reviewers would question if the resources that you are seeking would be sufficient to support your objectives and promises.
The fifth principle involves the need for “attention to structure,” such as ensuring that all references are correctly cited, that proposal instructions are carefully followed, and, as we noted earlier, that the proposal is easy to read, with no typos, incorrect spellings, or glaring grammatical errors. We cannot emphasize enough the critical need to follow instructions so that reviewers do not have to hunt for required information. Use techniques such as cross-referencing sections and evaluative criteria to show the reviewers that you value their time and effort.
Common Elements of a Research Proposal
As in sharing information and writing a report, writing a proposal to initiate the research process involves answering a series of questions (Box 21-1).
Although each agency or potential funding source, IRB, or department has its own format for writing a research proposal, there are common elements to such a document. Table 21-1 outlines the basic sections required for most proposals, regardless of the type of research or the research tradition. Each section of a proposal is designed to answer the core questions posed in Box 21-1, which relate to the “who, what, when, where, how, and how much” of your research idea. The basic elements of a proposal ask you to address how your research idea fits into the larger body of knowledge, as well as how you intend to use the findings or knowledge that you generate.
TABLE 21-1
| Necessary Element | Information Included |
| Why | Title Abstract Introduction/Statement of research problem |
| What | Specific aims/Study objectives Literature review/Significance |
| How | Action plan/Methodology Reporting/Dissemination plan |
| When | Management of project Timeline |
| Who | Investigator credential |
| Where | Institutional qualifications Resources |
| Supporting material | Previous experience, publications Letters of support Formal agreements with consultants, other institutions if applicable Protection of human subjects |
| How much | Budget Budget justification |
We now examine each of these proposal elements in more detail.
Title
The title of your research study captures the main idea or theme of your proposal in a short phrase. It should not be so brief that it says nothing or so long that a person reading your proposal has to work to determine the point of your study.
Assume you want to conduct a study on the health conditions of elder men who are homeless and living in the shelter system. A title such as “Homeless Men” would be too brief and would not capture the main idea of your proposed research. A better title might be “Health Conditions of Older Homeless Men.”
Some agencies have specific requirements as to the length of the title. For example, a title of a research proposal submitted to the NIH must not exceed 56 typewritten spaces, including punctuation and spaces between words.
Abstract
The abstract is a brief description of each element contained in your proposal. It represents an executive summary of the study you propose. Generally, the abstract contains a statement of the purpose of your study or project, your research design, and key actions. If you are submitting your proposal to an external agency, there may be word limitations. In either case, the abstract must be clear and succinct but comprehensive. In addition to the title, the abstract is the first section of the proposal that a reviewer reads and thus provides the framework for reviewing your proposal. An abstract that is not clearly written, that is not comprehensive, or that has typographical, spelling, or grammatical errors can be misleading and can give the reviewer a poor impression, potentially influencing how the entire proposal is evaluated.
Because the abstract represents an executive summary of the entire project, it should actually be the last section you complete. However, keep in mind that you may write a draft abstract to guide your thinking and to send to people from whom you are requesting letters of support. For NIH grant applications, the title and abstract will be used to assign your proposal to a specific panel of reviewers. Thus, it is essential that both title and abstract reflect the core content of the proposal so that it is given to the appropriate panel.
Introduction
One way to begin your proposal is with an introductory paragraph that provides the reader with a general overview of the project's main idea and its importance. In this section, you address the questions regarding what your project is about and why it is important. You state the overall purpose of your study in the introduction. This section is an ideal location to link your proposal to the values and aims of the funder.
Consider your study on the health conditions of homeless men. An opening introductory paragraph would briefly discuss the increasing number of persons who are homeless in the United States, the type of health conditions that have been documented by previous research, and the gap in knowledge that your study will address. You might conclude with your purpose statement and articulate how it meets the mission and values of the agency from which you are seeking funding.
Although this introductory section is brief, it is necessary to cite data from sources such as national studies or reports. Citing credible sources throughout your proposal demonstrates that you have done your homework and are familiar with the empirical work in your area.
Specific Aims
“Aims” stem from a research purpose statement and concisely describe what will be tested or evaluated in your research project. In addition to specifying the aims of the study, you might state hypotheses specific to each aim that you intend to test formally, if appropriate. Box 21-2 provides an example of a specific aim and an accompanying hypothesis.
If you propose to conduct a study using a qualitative methodology in which formal hypothesis testing is inappropriate, you will need to explain this point carefully to reviewers (as we discuss later). Although there is increasing awareness among review panels of the scientific value of naturalistic inquiry, the formats for most proposals even in the 21st-century climate of pluralism and acceptance of multiple methodologies as viable and worthy favor a quantitative or linear structure to describing the research plan.
“Aim statements” are critical building blocks of a proposal. They provide a mental template or a road map of what you plan to accomplish in the project.
Rationale: Significance and Importance
Next in your proposal, you need to provide a compelling rationale for your study and discuss why it is significant and how it will address a gap in existing knowledge. Providing a brief but poignant and well-cited review of the key literature that informs your research is important (see Chapter 5). Although having an idea that is exciting to you is a necessary starting point in conducting a research study, the idea must also have some merit, must acknowledge that you are aware of previous and current work that is relevant to your area, and must be perceived as significant by the larger scientific community and your audience, whether a human subject board, funding agency, or your professor.
You will address the “so what” question in the rationale. The “so what” question is a response that a reviewer might make after reading this section if you have not convinced the person that your idea is important and relevant to public health. The “so what” response represents a fatal flaw in a research endeavor. If a reviewer cannot answer the “so what” question by reading your rationale, it has a poor chance of being evaluated positively regardless of its methodological rigor or design validity.
The significance of your research idea must be justified with a concise review of other research studies that highlight the level of knowledge of the field, the need for further research, and how your research addresses the gap in knowledge. Your review of previous research should demonstrate that your question or query is important but has not been satisfactorily answered. It should include only the most pertinent and current works and not a long discourse about topics only peripherally related to your project. A theoretical framework should also be clearly and explicitly linked to the variables you propose to examine. Remember to be succinct but inclusive in your citations. You would not want to omit the important work of one or more of your reviewers.
There are at least two ways to organize the writing of the literature review. One approach is to present articles chronologically, with the oldest articles first, to provide a historical perspective. Another approach is to group articles according to common themes that are relevant to your topic.
In your study on the health conditions of men who are homeless, one strategy for reviewing and categorizing the related literature is to locate articles or studies that do the following:
1. Identify national and local statistics about the number of individuals who are homeless.
2. Contain demographic data about the homeless population.
3. Describe the health care needs of homeless persons.
4. Describe the problems faced by this group in accessing the health care system.
5. Discuss the strengths of previous and current work and clearly identify the gaps that you will fill in knowledge about health conditions of men who are homeless.
6. Identify the methodological challenges in sample identification and data collection and how you will address these.
In reviewing the literature, it is important to consider resources outside your own field or profession and to obtain sources where the original work in an area is conducted. We find that reading in diverse fields not only enhances our knowledge but also provides a broad set of ideas that contribute to creativity and uniqueness. However, in grantsmanship, we caution you to use broad theory and research for thinking and providing a competitive proposal while also taking great care to propose a project that directly meets the funder's criteria, aims, mission, and values.
If the topic area of interest to you has not been studied or written about extensively, your review may be relatively brief. You then need to demonstrate that your topic is significant and cite the lack of research as one reason for conducting your study. A critical point to remember in writing a review of relevant literature is that the information you use and report must be from primary sources. A primary source is the original article or resource from which this information is reported. It is usually not appropriate to discuss a research article that is described or presented in an article by an author who did not conduct or report on the original study. So even if you use a meta-review of literature, obtain each of the articles that you cite and critically evaluate them for yourself.
At the conclusion of reviewing relevant literature, provide a summary that reflects a synthesis and analysis of the articles. In this concluding section, you should discuss the way in which the literature you cited supports your background, significance, research question, hypotheses, and design. Also, identify the gaps in knowledge and the way in which your study or proposed program systematically contributes to knowledge building to address these gaps.
Research Plan
In this section of the research proposal, each action process is described in succinct and clear detail, including plans for bounding your study, identifying and recruiting a sample or informants, collecting information, and analyzing the data you obtain. Also, you will need to provide a justification for each action process. Box 21-3 outlines key aspects of research methodology to present in a proposal. Remember that your methodology must display coherence with the literature and purpose and must be “doable” with the resources available.
Common mistakes made in writing this section of a proposal are an inadequate justification for why a particular action process is chosen, poor integration of ideas, lack of coherence among parts of the proposal, lack of design rigor, and lack of sufficient detail about the bounding and selecting of research study participants.
Keep in mind that there is no specific order for presenting the subsections of the research methodology discussed next. Rather, your research plan should be presented in a logical order and should reflect an integration of your ideas.
Research Design
As discussed in Part III, the research design is the “blueprint” or plan in experimental-type design or the expression of the tradition that will be followed in a naturalistic inquiry. Each component of the research design must be presented and justified clearly and concisely.
One strategy is to begin this section of the proposal with a brief statement that summarizes or labels the design you intend to implement (e.g., two-group randomized experimental design, retrospective chart review, 2 × 2 × 2 factorial design, ethnography) and explain in what way the design is appropriate to address your specific research question or query.
Then, briefly highlight the major elements of the design. In an experimental-type inquiry, state the independent and dependent variables, the sampling frame, sample size, and selection procedures and the number of testing occasions planned. It is important to be specific in your description. For example, when specifying the independent and dependent variables, include how each is related in the study (e.g., causal, explanatory, mediator, predictor). Box 21-4 provides an example of a design statement for an experimental-type study.
In a naturalistic inquiry, the same level of specificity must be provided as in experimental-type research. (The issues related to this point are discussed later.) Specify the basic tradition in which the query is based; the context, field, or geographic location where the inquiry will proceed; the key projected data collection strategies (e.g., key informant, participant observation); and the analytical plan. Box 21-5 provides an example of a design statement for a query in a naturalistic tradition.
Boundary Setting
This section of a proposal describes how you intend to “bound” your study. Consider outlining the following five basic points:
1. Describe the criteria that will be used to select study participants, or other units of analysis. This action process involves listing the specific criteria for inclusion and exclusion of study participants, locations, boundary setting concepts and so forth, and the reason or justification for each of these criteria.
2. Describe the anticipated characteristics of the study participants or units of analysis and the extent to which these are representative of the population to which you plan to generalize the study findings in an experimental-type design or the logic for selection in a naturalistic study. In discussing the sample characteristics, include any descriptors that are relevant such as age, gender, race, ethnicity, and health status.
3. Describe the procedures you will use for recruiting the sample, informants, or nonhuman boundaries.
4. For experimental-type proposals, discuss the sample size and the justification for its adequacy using power analysis, if appropriate. For naturalistic studies, discuss how you will enter the field and ensure that boundary setting is dynamic, feasible, and sufficient.
Collecting Information. This subsection should include a discussion of the procedures you will follow in collecting data and the instruments and/or techniques you will use, if applicable.
Human Subjects. This subsection provides a discussion of the protection of human subjects. If they are actively participating in your study, this part of your proposal should include (1) your plans to ensure confidentiality of the information or data that you obtain from human subjects, (2) how consent from study participants will be obtained, (3) the potential benefits and risks for a subject associated with participation, and (4) the risk-to-benefit ratio (see discussion on IRBs in Chapter 12).
Design Rigor
In experimental-type proposals, you must address the validity and reliability of your design. As we have discussed, validity refers to whether a design and its procedures are appropriate and will yield information to answer the research question. You should explain the specific procedures you will use to ensure that your approach is the appropriate way to answer your research question. For example, if your purpose is to demonstrate causality, you might use an experimental design and discuss why the particular design you chose is most appropriate.
For experimental-type designs, you also should explain the reliability of your approach to data collection and analysis. Clearly describe the specific design features you have established that will ensure consistency of procedures in such a way that another investigator could replicate your study.
For naturalistic studies, include a discussion of your plans to ensure trustworthiness and authenticity.
For example, suppose you are planning to use an open-ended interview approach to theorize the meaning of loss of ambulation resulting from injury to individuals who had been distance runners. You would discuss your plans for saturation, for the use of multiple analyzers, and for affirming the accuracy of your interpretations through member checking.
Assumptions and Limitations
In this section of the proposal, you discuss the specific limitations of your design. Almost every study has some limitations, based either on features inherent in the design or in its application to your particular situation. Think about these limitations and how they may introduce possible sources of bias or limits in accuracy of description or interpretation.
Suppose you are conducting a Delphi study. A limitation of this technique is that some respondents may discuss their opinions with others participating in the study. This is a limitation that may have consequences for your findings. Thus, you should identify this limitation and discuss the way you plan to address it.
Timetable
It is important to outline in narrative or table format the basic actions that will be implemented and the time required. This step is essential because it provides your audience with an understanding of each necessary action and whether it is feasible to accomplish these actions within the planned time frame of the study. Also, the timetable provides a road map and schedule of the actions you will take, which will be a helpful reference as you propose your budget and, if funded, manage the research study.
Analytical Plan
This section involves a discussion of your analytical strategy and the statistical tests or qualitatively based techniques you plan to use. In your discussion, it is helpful to restate the specific aims and hypotheses of your study, if applicable, and then identify the analytical approaches that will be used to address each aim or hypothesis. Also, provide a brief rationale for your choice of analytical approaches, and if it is an experimental-type study, include the significance level that will be used to determine statistical significance.
Dissemination Plan
Sharing your research findings is an essential element of the research process (see Chapter 2). Also, most funding sources want to be sure that their funds are used wisely and that the results of a successful project have a wide impact. From their perspective, it makes little sense to fund a project if only a few people will benefit from a successful outcome. Therefore, many agencies require that you present a systematic plan to show how you will disseminate the results of your project. Two accepted ways to do this are through presentations at national, scientific, and professional meetings and through publications in online or paper copies of professional journals. Also, consider other creative and innovative ways to ensure a wide distribution of your findings that target multiple audiences. These methods may include the development and distribution of instructional manuals, plans to develop workshops or continuing education programs, blogging, locating your work on a Web site, or special ways to reach consumers as well as other professional groups. We discuss this in more detail in Chapter 22.
Plan of Management
In this section, you begin to answer the question as to why you are the most appropriate person to conduct the study you are proposing in the setting that you identify. Although you may have a wonderful idea, you must also assure your readership that you can accomplish the program goals efficiently. This section is particularly important when applying to a funding agency. You can answer this question by showing that you have a clear, logical, and efficient plan of management that will be executed by a project team of well-qualified people at an institution or context that can provide the necessary support and resources. A clear description of the organizational and management structure will answer the first part of this question. In your management plan, you will need to discuss in detail the roles and responsibilities of key personnel, the amount of time each person will work on the project, and the time frame in which each project task will be implemented. Agencies frequently request that you organize this information in the form of a timeline or a detailed chart of major activities.
An approach to writing this section is to visualize that you have already been funded. Think about exactly what you would have to do implement your action plan if you were to start tomorrow. Who would you need to hire? What contacts would be important? What resources would you need? Logically and rationally think through your plan before you write this section. The process may raise critical points of weakness in your research design, or it may highlight limitations in institutional resources.
Investigative Team Credentials
This section also helps answer the question about your qualifications to carry out the project. Review your plan to determine the special skills necessary to implement each step of the project. Then carefully select and describe your team and how the individual members comprise a whole unit with the full complement of expertise and credentials necessary to be successful in accomplishing the goals and objectives that you propose. For example, if you are proposing a study that requires a repeated-measures design or statistical modeling techniques, make sure you have a statistician on your team with expertise in these specific analytical strategies. If your study uses naturalistic inquiry, you must ensure that a member of your team is an expert in qualitative methodologies and your proposed software analytic programs. In writing an educational grant, make sure you are working with someone who has curriculum development skills.
In writing about the credentials of the team, you should include a brief descriptive paragraph highlighting the qualifications of each member. Emphasize their past experience, publications, or presentations that show expertise in the topic of the project. You should also cite funding for other projects, either from sources external to your institution or from sources inside your institution, that you or other members have received. Offices held in professional organizations, teaching, or consulting experiences can provide additional credibility and demonstrate that you have the necessary background to implement the research successfully.
Institutional Qualifications
Just as your team needs to be qualified, your institution or agency context needs to have the resources to assist and support you in carrying out your project. You need to include a concise description of your institution's resources and qualifications. For example, has your institution acquired a significant amount of external funding? Does it have access to a comprehensive library, a learning resource center, or an active research office? What are the computer facilities available for your use?
Budget and Budget Justification
These sections address questions regarding the cost of your project and the reasons for the costs. You need to prepare a budget that is not inflated or wasteful and still sufficient to accomplish all your activities. Do not try to “pad” your budget by inflating costs or adding unnecessary expenses. Also, do not underestimate what it will cost you to carry out the study or educational program. The best rule of thumb is to develop a budget that accurately reflects the cost of the activities you are proposing. Most institutions have budget offices or offices of research administration that can help you as you prepare this budget.
You also are required to justify each expense. This information should be included in a budget justification section following the actual budget. In this section, describe for what each item will be used, how the budget item was calculated, and why it is necessary for your study.
References
As in all scholarly work, a reference of your sources of information is required. If the agency does not specify a reference style, we recommend using the style specified by the American Psychological Association. In any case, be sure to be coherent in the presentation of references.
Appendix Material
Appendices usually include information that supplements the narrative portion of the document. Appendix materials may include the “curriculum vitae” of key members of the research team in the form and length requested by the funder, sample questionnaires or examples of open-ended probes, pertinent articles you have authored that relate to the study, and most important, letters of support from consultants or from leaders in your profession.
Special considerations
Special considerations in preparing proposals are based on the type of research you plan to conduct.
Preparing an Experimental-Type Proposal
Within the experimental-type tradition, language and structure for presentation are standard across the basic elements of the proposal. The language used is logical and in the active tense. It involves a temporal and logical sequence detailing each step. Usually, ideas are presented in the third person and detached from personal opinion. The experimental-type report usually has six sections in the body of the report, an abstract, and a list of references used to support the inquiry.
The abstract precedes the narrative report and serves as a summary of each section of the proposal. The reference list contains full citations of all literature identified in the proposal. Many citation formats exist. We suggest that you consider the use of a computerized program (e.g., Procite, Endnote, or the most recent version of Microsoft Word) to keep track of your literature and to format your references automatically in your style of choice. The degree of detail and precision in each section will depend on the purpose, funder guidelines, and audience for the proposal.
Preparing a Naturalistic Proposal
Because of the many epistemologically and structurally different types of naturalistic designs, we cannot assert a single proposal structure. Although some funders call specifically for naturalistic proposals, most funders still issue guidelines that require you to conform to the basic elements previously outlined. Unfortunately, this structure favors the linear approach of experimental-type research. If this situation presents itself, the proposal format, particularly the demand for details before entering the field, can present as a challenge to the naturalistic researcher. In addition, many audiences or reviewers of proposals are schooled in the tradition of experimental-type research and do not understand the naturalistic tradition or the vast differences in approaches to research design.
In writing a proposal to a linear request for proposals and most likely a reviewer audience not well informed in the naturalistic tradition, the naturalistic researcher must be sure not only to lay out the details of the action plans but also to explain clearly why a particular action will be implemented according to its appropriateness for the tradition in which the research is based. For example, the researcher might want to offer a set of “working” hypotheses and explain why in naturalistic research it is not appropriate to offer testable statements. Or the researcher may need to specify approaches to data collection (e.g., watching, in-depth interviewing, review of documents) but must explain that the approaches used will unfold at different points in time, to be decided after the investigator is in the field. Again, it is important to provide a detailed justification for each action statement and why it is appropriate in a naturalistic approach. Thus, in writing the proposal, you not only have to provide an explanation of your study but also help educate the reviewer as to how to evaluate your design within the specific tradition you are following.
Preparing a Mixed-Method Proposal
In developing a proposal for a study that uses mixed methods, care must be taken to provide sufficient justification and details for each methodological component. Because a mixed-method study may involve different research traditions, there is an added level of complexity to the proposal writing process. As in any proposal, the writer must strive for clarity and precision in presentation as well as completeness. Each component of the designs and how and why methods are being mixed must be carefully detailed.
Submitting the Proposal
Previously proposals were submitted by mailing a signed original and the required number of paper copies to the funding source. Many foundations, international funders, and corporate funders still request this format. However, for federal grants, the vast majority, if not all, are submitted online. Following suit, foundations are increasingly requesting online submissions as well. The majority of federal grants are submitted on www.grants.gov or www.fastlane.gov (the site for the National Science Foundation). You should familiarize yourself with the process of registering and submitting early in the process of preparing your proposal.
If you are submitting a proposal through an institution or agency setting, the institution is the applicant and must be registered. If you are submitting for an individual fellowship, you must be registered as an individual. Registration can often take up to five days, so register early. University and health institutional settings must have an identified representative who can sign the grant and assurances required by the funder. Working with your sponsored programs office if you have one will help you know who this individual is and the time needed for signatures.
We offer a word of advice regarding timing. These systems are not always user-friendly, so we suggest that you give yourself time to become familiar with them. Although we realize that proposals are often prepared under stringent time deadlines, try to submit before the final hours. Doing so will avoid the loss of so many hours of work because the submission system is offline or not operating correctly.
Summary
You now should have a basic understanding of how and why researchers share their thinking and actions before engaging in the field. One important reason to share before the conduct of a study is to secure financial support for the activity. Grantsmanship is a critical component of the thinking processes in which researchers engage, and we refer you to other books that provide more comprehensive and focused discussions of grantsmanship that you may find useful.2,3 Key to writing a research proposal is careful consideration of fit with the values of the funder, your purpose, and proposal format, audience, and detail. Use of technical language and direct, clear simple statements is optimal. Readers—usually a group of the investigator's peers, that is, persons knowledgeable in the content of the research question or query—will scrutinize each statement in a proposal. Most critical in justifying the research question or query and proposed action plan is to provide supporting evidence that is compelling and credible. By knowing the audience (e.g., who will be reading your proposal), you can also select the evidence that is most credible for that group. If you are writing for a medical audience, you might emphasize the significance of your research for quality of care; if you are writing for a health policy audience, emphasizing cost-effectiveness may be more important. No matter what research tradition you are working in or which proposal format you use, five principles should guide its development: clarity, precision, parsimony, coherence, and attention to structure.
References
1. Gilson, S., DePoy, E. Nitty gritty of proposal writing, 2010. http://www.astos.org/assets/Grant-Anatomy2. [ppt#282,17, Boilerplate: Resources and Institutional Setting. Accessed January].
2. Gitlin, L.N., Lyons, K.J. Successful grant writing: strategies for health and human service professionals, ed 3. New York: Springer, 2004.
3. DePoy, E., Gilmer, D. Adolescents with disabilities and chronic illness in transition: a community action needs assessment. Disabil Stud Q. 2000. [Spring].