The document provides an overview of strategies for writing a successful grant application, including developing specific aims first, securing appropriate technical assistance, approaching a statistician early, and using graphics to communicate information concisely to reviewers. It emphasizes working out the logic of the study before writing and discussing components like the theoretical model, preliminary research, and literature review.

1. Grantsmanship: Strategies
for Success
– Dr. Willo Pequegnat
National Institute of Mental Health
National Institutes of Health
wpequegn@mail.nih.gov
301 443-1187 (o); 301 443-6000 (fax)

2. Take Home Message
Develop your specific aims first
Contact your potential Project Officer
When seeking TA, listen more than you talk.
Keep your proposal on two pages until you have
worked out the logic for your study.
Be patient and persistent.
Do not rush back in with a revision.

3. How to Write a Successful
Research Grant Application:
 A Guide for Social and Behavioral Scientists
 Second Edition
 Willo Pequegnat, Ellen Stover, Cheryl Anne
Boyce, Editors
 Springer, 2010

4. Overview of Talk
 Finding a Funding Opportunity
Announcement (FOA) (Handout 2)
 Table of Contents of Grant (Handout 3)
 Outline for Specific Research Plan
 Role of Principal Investigator
 Specific Aims (Handouts

5. Overview of Talk (Cont’d)
 Work Out Logic Before Writing
(Handout 4)
 Securing Appropriate Technical
Assistance (TA)
 Investigator Initiated Research

6. Overview of Talk (Cont’d)
 Approach Statistician Early
 Visit Institutional Grants Office Before
You Need Them
 Research Team (Handout 5)
 Reviewers and Review System
(Handout 9)

7. Overview of Talk (Cont’d)
Theoretical Model Driving Your Research
(Handouts 6 and 7)
Preliminary Research
Literature Research
Visual Impression of Your Research
Application
Graphics Communicate (Handout 8)

8. Funding Opportunity
Announcement (FOA)
 Look in the NIH guide:
 It is key-word searchable (topic, mechanism,
Institute)
 http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/index
 Critical components (participating Institutes,
research objectives, dates, mechanisms of
support, eligibility, review information, program
officers)
 Handout 2

9. Investigator-Initiated Research
Applications
 Some prospective applicants call and ask “What
are you funding now?”
 “What RFAs do you have now?”
 If you have an innovative, significant idea, that is
what Institutes are looking for to advance science.
 Project Officers can provide you with guidance
about priorities and whether your idea would find
favor.

10. Securing Appropriate
.
Technical Assistance (TA)
 Every Funding Opportunity Announcement
(FOA) has a list of Project Officers at the end.
 http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/index.
 These people wrote FOA; have vested interest in
receiving good applications.
 Be judicious in asking people to read it or be
consultants, need people to review your
application.

11. Role of Principal Investigator
Your name will appear on the application
You are the conductor orchestrating your
team.
Listen to advice but make what you think
is the best scientific decision.
You are responsible to conduct the study as
designed, reviewed, and funded.

12. Approach Statistician Early
 Statisticians are scarce and so you want to engage
one early.
 Find a statistician when you have specific aims,
hypotheses, theoretical model, measures to assess
constructs.
 You want to be sure that you are using measures
that are collecting the data that can be used in the
latest, appropriate data analytic methods.
 Do not take your statistician for granted.

13. Visit Institutional Grants Office Before
You Need Them
 The grant is awarded to the institution not you.
 Another person you should meet early is the
Authorized Official Representative/Signing
Official (AOR/SO).
 The AOR/SO counter signs the face page of the
application.
 The AOR/SO submits your application and co-
signs all your requests for changes in the NGA.

14. Work Out Logic Before Writing
 Keep your proposal to two pages with bullets.
 Do not begin writing until you have worked out
the logic.
 Possible to get lost in the words and end up with
inconsistencies.
 Writing is the easiest part, designing the
components is the difficult part.

15. Table of Contents
 The Proposal is approximately 100 pages
covering: performance sites, Bios of key
personnel, budget, PHS checklist)
 PHS 398 Specific Research Plan is only 12 pages
(depending on mechanism)
 Handout 3 (front of page)

16. Outline for Specific Research Plan
 A. Specific Aims
 B. Background and Significance
 C. Preliminary Studies/Progress Report
 D. Research Design and Methods
 E. Human Subjects Research
 Handout 3 (back)

17. Specific Aims
 Important because they provide the reviewer with
an idea of what to expect in your proposal.
 Organize the structure of the proposal.
 Establish order in which issues will be addressed
in each section of proposal.
 More clear if they are in bullet form.

18. Specific Aims (continued)
 Be cautious about having too many specific aims,
because reviewers will feel that it is a “fishing
expedition.”
 One way to handle this is to triage into primary
and secondary specific aims.
 Be sure you have a product for each aim not a
method.

19. Specific Aims (continued)
Specific aims must be specific not global:
- End HIV in adolescents at risk for HIV (global)
- Test whether HIV-related risk behaviors of
adolescents in families that are trained as AIDS
educators have a later sexual debut when
compared with control group (specific)

20. Developing a Successful
Research Team
 Develop grid of the expertise needed to conduct
study:
 On side put areas (AIDDS, developing
interventions, lab procedures, statistician, data
manager, etc.).
 Along top put names of potential team.
 Put checks to indicate who is expert in areas.

21. Developing a Successful
Research Team (cont’d)
 Offer role on research team to those persons.
 Inverse relationship between status of position
offered and need for that expertise.
 Multiple PI, co-PI, co-investigator, project
member.
 Role of consultants (specific expertise needed at
specific time).
 Specifying key personnel.

22. Developing a Successful
Research Team (cont’d)
 Allocation correct amount of effort is important.
 PI often criticized for not committing enough
time.
 Allocation of effort is expressed as percentage of
effort associated with project, multiplied by the
number of months of appointment:
Example: 25% of a 9-month academic year
appointment equals 2.25 person months (9 x 0.25
= 2.25)

23. Reviewers on Scientific Review
Group (SRG)
 Center for Scientific Review (CSR) website has
study section rosters: http://era.nih.gov/roster/
 Decide which members likely to review your
application; review their work.
 Ask people with whom you are already in conflict
to review pre-submission review of your
application or be a consultant, if possible.


24. Theoretical Model Driving Your
Research
 All empirical research is based on assumptions
about what is happening and why.
 Even if your assumptions are not discussed, they
are implicit in what constructs you choose to
assess.
 Your assumptions about what is happening form
your theoretical framework.

25. Theoretical Framework (cont’d)
 Your hypotheses are your predictions of what will
happen.
 A theory of the problem is a way of explaining
why your intervention changes behavior.

26. Theoretical Framework (cont’d)
 Adolescents have high level of STDs
 Social cognitive - assume that high risk behavior
based on subjective norms
 Psychosocial - assume it is based on poor
communication skills and feelings of self worth
 Biological - assume based on understimulation
and sensation seeking

27. Behavior Change: Theoretical Model
Self-
Standard
Behavioral Attitude
Beliefs Skills
Normative Norms Behavior
Beliefs Intentions
Self-
Efficacy Efficacy Environmental
Beliefs Constraints
Emotional
Reactions

28. Theoretical Framework (cont’d)
 Theoretical framework drives both your
intervention and your assessment plan.
 There should be a measure for every construct in
your theoretical framework.
– Skills
– Intentions
– Environment Restraints
– Behavior change

29. Preliminary Research
 This is the research that you have conducted.
 Do not list everything that you have done only the
research that has provided you with skills to
conduct the proposed research.
 Briefly describe the study, what you found, and
how you have used these findings to develop this
proposal.

30. Literature Review
 This demonstrates the breadth of knowledge
about the field.
 If you leave out something, the reviewers will
assume you do not know about it.
 Cite only publications that build the case for your
study.
 The literature review should convince the review
group that your study is the next logical step.

31. Visual Impression of Your
Research
 Remember that only 5 people in the review will
have read your application in advance.
 Most reviewers will be sitting in a room with poor
lighting trying to review the parts of the grant on
their computer screens that matter the most to
them while the 3 reviewers are giving their verbal
evaluations of your proposal.
 Use good headings and white space to help them.

32. Graphics Communicate
 Using graphics is an excellent strategy to help the
reviewers quickly grasp what you are proposing
and how long it will take.
 A table of research subjects can present
information on the patient flow at research sites.
 Then, you can base your recruitment plan on that
flow.

33. Graphics Communicate (cont’d)
 A timeline for research activities can help you
plan.
 Looking horizontally lets you demonstrate that
you can accomplish the tasks in the time allotted.
 Looking vertically lets you demonstrate why you
have asked for the effort of different staff at
different times.

34. Questions and Answers
 ?