FellowshipWorkshopDocuments
Abstract and Specific Aims Pages
The worksheet for this week can be found at Aims Worksheet and the slides are available at Aims Slides
Documents for this Session
This session we will work on three research-related documents with increasing level of details.
- Project Narrative - 2-3 sentences of public health relevance
- Abstract - The abstract must be <30 lines of text.
- Aims Page - A page summarizing the research proposal
Review Criteria
- Has the applicant included plans to address weaknesses in the rigor of prior research that serves as the key support for the proposed project?
- Has the applicant presented strategies to ensure a robust and unbiased approach, as appropriate for the work proposed?
- Is the research project consistent with the candidate’s stage of research development?
- Is the proposed research project of high scientific quality, and is it well integrated with the proposed research training plan?
- Is the prior research that serves as the key support for the proposed project rigorous?
Suggestions and Ideas for Aims Page
- Must contain everything that is exciting and important, but not in much detail
- This is the most important section of entire grant
- Must quickly engender enthusiasm, the logic must be compelling, seamless flow of logical progression
- Write the aims page first and revise at the end
- The reviewer will come to a general conclusion about you, the idea and the clarity of your thinking by the time they have finished this page NIH explicit in what they want covered… share goals of proposed research, summarize the expected outcomes including positive outcomes on the field
- List specific aims succinctly, test a stated hypothesis, solve a specific problem
- Suggest writing this in four paragraphs/parts (identiying the need, outlining your solution, specific actions, summarizing the outcomes)
The relationship between your problem and your solution and the various componenents are summarized here:
Identify the need
- Convince everyone that there is a gap in knowledge, that should be funded. First sentence needs to be very strong
- Need a “hook” sentence, or an attention-grabbing sentence. Generally should be able to identify what the proposal will be about, and immediately relate to the mission of the funding agency.
- Do not simply state knowledge that is obvious to any reviewer. Should be very specific, needs a directional focus “Improved physical activity is the strongest indicator of improved health, but the mechanisms by which muscle function can result in metabolic improvements are not known”
- It is useful to have an impressive statistic or effect of public health importance
- Is there a specific implicit problem in the opening sentence? Should not be able to say “so what” to the first sentence
- After first, sentence, 4-6 pithy sentences, these need to review the current state-of-the-art knowledge. Bring reviewer up to speed with the state of the art of the field.
- Cite key references here (not review articles, unless you wrote it).
- These important knowns must lead to the gap in our knowledge (this is framing the problem)
- The problem has to be important, don’t say that no one has studied the problem as a reason. “To the best of our knowledge” introduces an element of doubt, avoid doubt
- Whatever the gap we must make the case for a real problem, and therefore should be a critical need
- Second to last sentence of introductory paragraph should be “critical need” statement (underline and italicize). This is the driving force for your proposal
- Final sentence should indicate why or how the continued existence of this critical need is an issue for the funding agency.
- This should NOT provide your idea for the solution, but that the absence of a solution provides a compelling need. For example “in the absence of such knowledge…” Not going to care about the why, unless the why leads to interventions. Why should the reviewers care about the existence of this critical need.
- If by the end of the paragraph, you have not convinced the reviewers of a gap, that leads to a critical need, that is of high priority then the rest of the grant dosen’t matter. It will be very difficult to sell to a reviewer if you do a bad job here. This is why peak enthusiasm has to be accomplished in the aims page
Outline Your Solution
- This is your what and why paragraph
- First sentence should state state long term goal (career scope goal) BROAD. This should include the need for further training.
- Your long term goal should be consistent with some part of the mission of the NIH or NIDDK
- Be realistic, do not overstate your capacities. You are not going to cure cancer
- Something like, identify key factors which modulate predispositions to obesity so that improved diagnoses and therapies can be provided to patients.
- Second sentence should be the objective. NARROWER. This is the objective in this application or objective for this application. It must agree with the critical need, objective has to be to solve it.
- This must be an appreciable step towards the long term goal.
- There must be a well-defined endpoint. Should not be indeterminate (study) or descriptive. How would you know you have studied it enough? ”To better understand” screams incremental advance, just say to understand why. Can you change the verb to “look to see” and it means the same thing? then it is an indeterminate objective. Unhelpful objectives may describe processes, we want to describe an outcome not the process that lead to it
- Make sure that it closely matches your critical need, and that it represents a step along a continuum of your long term goal. Can you obtain the objective by formulating a simple hypothesis or by addressing the need
- Must an overall hypothesis: an educated guess NARROWEST has to be based on a body of evidence, must be compatible with all known facts. It must be testable (i.e. could concievably test invalid)
- Prrovide evidence to support hypothesis right after, for example “our hypothesis has been formulated based on the existing literature and our preliminary findings demonstrating that ENTER MOST COMPELLING PRELIMINARY DATA HERE, All three components (Goal -> Objective -> Hypothesis) should be linked and follow a clear logical progression For the rationale statement What is possible after the project is done, that is not possible now the underlying reason that you decided to pursue the project in the first place should relate to critical need and mission of the funding agency
Specific Aims
- Use bulleted aims statements with headline, eye catching statements.
- Must fully test central hypothesis and obtain the stated objective thereby fully addressing the critical need
- Think of conceptual and short specific aims statements, not descriptive one. Can you replace with “look to see”, don’t use “whether” or “may”, which can make it seem like possible to get only negative outcome. For example identify the …. means that aim is viable.
- Each aim should be supported by one working hypothesis
- Focus on outcome, not the process of getting to the outcome. This means that the aim is still viable even if the working hypothesis is wrong, can address in alternate approaches sections
- Aims should be inter-related but not inter-dependent.
- Consider a drawing of how the aims relate to each other and the central hypothesis and objective.
- If your central hypothesis has two discernible parts, it should lead to two specific aims
Summarize expectations
- What is the payoff to funding agency, for training grants should include how you will be a valuable future contributor
- In your mind, fast forward to the end of the grant. Everything worked perfectly, how would you summarize the value of the experience
- Inform the reviewers exactly what the return on investment will be and why this will be of value
- This is what you “will have” shown, so use future perfect tense
- Conclude with statement of positive impact of positive expected outcomes, which should relate back to the stated objective, and addressing of the need