Ten Ingredients for Writing Research Grant Proposals

Summary

We identify and discuss ten key ingredients in implementation research grant proposals. The paper reflects the team's experience and expertise: writing for federal funding agencies in the United States. We acknowledge that this will be a strength for some readers and a limitation for international readers, whom we encourage to contribute additional perspectives. Setting the stage with careful background detail and preliminary data may be more important for implementation research, which poses a unique set of challenges that investigators should anticipate and demonstrate their capacity to manage. Data to set the stage for implementation research may be collected by the study team through preliminary, feasibility, or pilot studies, or the team may draw on others' work, citing background literature to establish readiness for the proposed research.

Every PI struggles with the challenge of fitting into a page-limited application the research background, methodological detail, and information that can convey the project's feasibility and likelihood of success. The relative emphasis on, and thus the length of text addressing, the various sections of a grant proposal varies with the program mechanism, application call, and funding source. For NIH applications, most attention and detail should be allocated to the study method because the 'approach' section is typically weighted most heavily in scoring.

Moreover, the under-specification or lack of detail in study methodology usually receives the bulk of reviewer criticism. Well-constructed, parsimonious tables, logic models, figures reflecting key concepts, and the analytic plan for testing their relationships help add clarity, focus reviewers, and prevent misperceptions. All implementation research grants need to propose aims, study questions, or hypotheses whose answers will advance implementation science. Beyond this fundamental grounding, proposed implementation studies should address most, if not all, of the ingredients identified here. While no application can include a high level of detail about every ingredient, addressing these components can help assure reviewers of the proposed research's significance, feasibility, and impact.