Proposal guidelines (chapter 16)
Grant writing is as central to a scientific career as is writing papers and doing research.
Your proposal must establish a connection between your project’s goals and the agency’s interests
The proposal must present the need or problem, and your possible solution.
Guidelines to follow
The abstract summarizes the proposal, include highlights from each section.
Include: background, problem/need, overall objective, general strategy, and the signifcance.
Pay attention to the first and last sentence as they are powerful posisions you want to use to impress the reader.
Include a statement of need as it is key to the proposal.
Specific aims
Can be in a seperate section or apart of the abstract.
Your specific aims should be written in a list rather than in paragraph form, and they should be placed in boldface to highlight them
Specific aims should be in percise language.
Introduction/ Background
Include background, statement of need, and aim/hypothesis.
Provide context and preliminary results for each aim.
Research design
Include rationale, experimental design analysis, expected results, and alternative strategies.
Describe the approach for each specific aim in detail.
Organize the section into subsections according to the specific aims.
Significance
End the proposal with a broad impact statement to show the overall significance.
Costs should be realistic and justified.