Writing the grant

Writing a grant has some commonalities with writing a scientific paper: you first tell the audience what you are going to tell them and why it’s important, then you detail your methods and (expected) results, and finally you tell them what it all means and why it was important.

The first part usually includes a section entitled specific aims, which is exactly that. You usually can’t divorce that from a context-setting preamble, but steer away from lengthy specific aims.

The best strategy is to copy successful models: NIH has recently posted some funded grants and reviewer comments: although these are not in Psychology, the general format and considerations apply: http://funding.niaid.nih.gov/researchfunding/grant/pages/appsamples.aspx.

Mark Lewis and Tim Vollmer recently have a funded R21 and have graciously agreed to share: Lewis-Volmer Funded R21.