We researchers are lucky. We get to pursue important questions, collaborate with smart people, work with interesting participants, create clever activities, and discover new things. Our work is crucial and can inform and shape the field and help people, all while having fun.
But applying for research grants is different from actually conducting research. Nothing forces you to center your thinking quite like the process of grant writing. You face the real challenge of having limited space to convince reviewers to buy into your idea. That’s why, more often than not, many first-time applications are not immediately accepted. While this can be disheartening at first, it can also be an important learning opportunity. Reviewer feedback can lead to success the next time around. To write a competitive proposal, you must be focused and disciplined, clear in your thinking, strategic in your writing approach, and clean in your presentation. Effective grant writing is a blend of science and art, an acquired skill that improves the more you do it. As someone who has volunteered as a reviewer for various ASHFoundation programs, here are six features I look for:
- Think of Your Proposal as a Narrative. Research grant proposals are technical creatures containing jargon and "prefab" components (e.g., aims, background, approach). These features are the content, but they don’t have to drive how you craft your story. The most effective and reviewer-friendly proposals are those that interweave important points across different components. A holistic story provides readers with multiple thoughtfully connected encounters with important points, making the proposal easier to follow and helping them come away with the essence and importance of your idea. Keep the jargon light and avoid acronyms. Plain, simple language can do the trick.
- Focus on Your Specific Aims. Beginning grant writers are often tempted to go big from the start—to ask broad questions and propose multiple specific aims (i.e., goals, objectives, expected outcomes). The sharpest proposals are those with one or two aims. Inclusion of a clear, testable hypothesis that aligns with each aim is also something reviewers expect to see. Focused aims and hypotheses tell reviewers that you understand your area and the need to be systematic in your approach. It also shows that you understand how to leverage your results into future proposals.
- Make it Compelling. Develop a tightly focused background that shows the significance of your idea; clearly state how your study will advance the field and why that’s important. Also tell reviewers about the broader social impact of your project and how it will benefit society.
- Make it Solid. Align your approach to your background and hypotheses. Include a brief description and rationale about the design you will use, who the participants will be, what measures you will use, and a description of how your measures theoretically map onto the constructs you are assessing (this is important). Include an analysis scheme, including a justification of your sample size based on a power analysis.
- Make it Clean. Adhere to all proposal guidelines and make certain your product is easy on the eyes. Use headers, sub-headers, and easily read tables and figures. Proofread for grammar, word choice, and typos. Proposals full of micro-errors are not received well and are often taken as a reflection of the care you put into its preparation—and worse yet, the care that may be taken to carry out the study if funded. Ask one or two colleagues who you know will give you unvarnished feedback about your proposal.
- Revise and Resubmit. Carefully consider all comments from reviewers and revise your proposal in line with their comments. If there are comments you do not address in the revision, provide a clear reason. Most reviewers will see such a revision as “responsive” to the prior review.
Research isn’t always easy because you must bring your goals and passion to life for others to see. But it can be fun because you get to make real changes for the better. Enjoy your journey!
Jim Montgomery, PhD, is a Professor of Hearing, Speech, and Language Sciences at Ohio University. He began his research career by receiving an ASHFoundation New Investigators Research Grant. His research program centers on the intersection of memory and sentence comprehension in children with developmental language disorders. His current research focuses on developing evidence-based treatment approaches to enhance children’s syntactic knowledge. He receives funding from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders to support his work.