Will I get the grant?

“Dear research whisperer,

Before I start thinking about my next grant, I just wanted to get your gut feeling for what you think is going to happen with the application that I put in this year. Any thoughts?”

Dear applicant

‘After the Heist’ by Jonathan O’Donnell on Flickr

That is the hardest question that I face in my job, and one that I always resist answering. It comes in many forms: researchers want to know whether they will win the grant; administrators want to know whether they will meet targets; and bosses want to put hard numbers into workplans.

I know that some other research whisperers like to predict who will be successful and who won’t, but I don’t play that game. I like your application. I think that it is really strong. However, as Mark Bisby (former VP Research for the Canadian Institutes of Health Research) puts it, “It’s not a test, it’s a contest” (we love that quote). It doesn’t matter how strong your application is if the opposition is stronger.  We have no control over the relative strength of the opposition.

More than that, I don’t believe that I have enough data to make a confident prediction. If I can’t make a confident prediction, then I am guessing.  Personally, I don’t believe that guessing is a valid planning tool.

I don’t have enough data because there are so many external factors influencing the competition that I can’t predict or influence.

You’ve applied for the ARC Linkage scheme. [This is an Australian research funding scheme that requires matching funds from external partners - Ed.] Here are some of the external factors that might influence that scheme this year. This should give you some idea why I don’t like to guess.

• Changes in the university landscape: The overall number of applications should continue to rise as universities put more pressure on academics to write more applications. More applications means more competition.
• Changes in the economy: The overall number of applications may be down because the economy is in a bad way and so partner organisations are less willing to ‘risk’ money on research projects.  In Australia’s case, however, we seem to have escaped the worst of the effects worldwide, so that may not apply here.
• Local political changes: The overall number of applications may be slightly down because Victoria and Queensland had a change of State governments just before the closing date, so anyone relying on those governments to be partners would have had a hard time getting signatures.
• Changes in the scheme itself: The overall number of applications may be slightly down because the Australian Research Council (ARC) introduced a new requirement that every external organisation needed a Partner Investigator as well, and some people may have had trouble signing up their partners. I don’t believe this, though. Our university was able to get all of our partners organised, so I don’t see why everybody else couldn’t, too.
• Changes within the funding body: The ARC may have ripped a bunch of money out of this particular scheme to fund the new Industrial Transformation Research Program (ITRP), or there could have been other internal pressures on the overall funding envelope.
• Changes within the funding landscape: The ARC doesn’t expect to get any new money into the system in the current funding climate. The head of the ARC said as much in November 2012. That means that, no matter how many excellent applications they receive, they cannot increase the funding envelope.
• National political events: There will be an election in Australia this year. This won’t change the overall chances of success, but it will almost certainly mean that the announcement of results will be delayed. The ARC cannot announce results until they are signed off by the Minister. The government doesn’t make any major decisions once an election is called. So, if the Minister hasn’t signed off before the election is called, the ARC are stuck in limbo until the election is finished and they have a Minister who can sign off.
• National political changes: There may be a change of government. This shouldn’t really effect things too much, except to add delay while the new government sorts out its ministry.  People are always a bit nervous that the new government might make sweeping changes and, even though I don’t think this will happen, it makes everybody a bit jittery. The minister does technically have the right to refuse to sign of on one or all of the grants put forward for funding.

If I were to make a prediction about your application, I wouldn’t know what I was talking about.  That wouldn’t be fair on you, or on me.

Sorry that I couldn’t be of assistance this time.

Research Whisperer

For She’s a Jolly Good Fellow

Balloon and bear, by Jonathan O’Donnell on Flickr

Recently, I received an application that was asking for a postdoctoral research assistant.

I thought, “That’s odd. Normally, we would talk about a ‘postdoc fellow’.”

Then I thought about all the requests that I’d fielded lately for funding research assistants.

My first question when working out the budget is: “Do you want someone who has a PhD already?”

If they have a PhD already, then doesn’t that, by definition, make them postdoctoral?

What exactly is the difference between:

• Research assistance;
• Research associate;
• Research fellow;
• Research assistant?

It is important to know, as they have very different budget implications.

Lazy sampling

Old post, by Jonathan O’Donnell on Flickr

There are lots of different sorts of sampling techniques (both random and non-random) and a myriad of books that explain the best one to use for any given methodology. ‘Snowball sampling‘ is my favourite – you start with one person and ‘sample’ them, then you ask them who you should talk to next, and so on. I like the convenience (when it is used well), and I love the name.

It seems to me that lots of people use a technique that I don’t like at all.

Let’s call it “Lazy sampling”.

“Participants in the study were 35 undergraduate students (24 women, 11 men) aged 18 to 26, recruited from a large university in [the area where the authors work]. We recruited participants in the [sociology] lab at the main campus and many received extra credit in their courses for participating in the study.”
[Information obscured so as not to embarrass the authors]

Just to be clear – this was not an educational research paper. It wasn’t talking about pedagogy or course development. It wasn’t a study about tertiary education. They were looking at a general social issue, using university students as their sample.

In selecting their sample, the researchers made the following decisions:

• They drew their sample from the University where they work, or (at best) a university nearby.
• They drew their sample from one laboratory on one campus.
• They either constrained the age of their sample so that only students would be selected, or they defined their age range after they had seen the ages of the students.
• They either constrained their sample to students or they worked within a reward structure that resulted in only students applying. No admin staff, no faculty staff, no visitors to the laboratory…
• They either didn’t care about gender or they didn’t try to recruit for even numbers.

Why? Why would anybody constrain their sample so tightly? One laboratory – what is that about ? Why would anyone exclude staff or visitors to the university? As a researcher, why wouldn’t you step outside the university and recruit from the local town or city? Wouldn’t it make your study stronger? Any expansion of the sample would have made this paper more interesting.

I don’t like this lazy sampling. I don’t like it at all. It really disappoints me when I open a promising article, only to find that the sample was this small and constrained.

Putting aside my own personal disappointment, lazy sampling is poor research.

Five ways to make a difference

Impacts, by Jonathan O’Donnell on Flickr

We aren’t here just to generate papers, people.

We’re here to make a difference, to improve things.

Heaven knows, there are enough issues out there that need our help!

If your research sits within the academy, being cited by other researchers, then you might get a promotion. But you probably won’t make a difference.

Here are five ways you can get out there and help put your research into action.

What’s your discipline?

Check those lashes! by Jonathan O’Donnell on Flickr

I was sitting in a workshop a while back (actually, it was a lecture, but nobody calls them ‘lectures’ when staff are attending), and an eminent professor used the phrase ‘cross disciplinary’.

“That’s pretty retro,” I thought. “Everybody talks about being ‘multi-disciplinary’ or ‘inter-disciplinary’. Actually, even that is a bit passé. ‘Trans-disciplinary’ is the word of the day. What the hell do these terms mean, anyway?”

Given that most of my working life consists of writing:

‘Be precise’,
‘What exactly do you mean?’, and
‘Reword for clarity’

in the margin of draft grant applications, I thought that I should come up with some working definitions, at least for my own satisfaction.

After all, these words are fundamental to our conception of modern research. They deserve precise definitions.

What is research?

End of the game, by Jonathan O’Donnell on Flickr

We all know what research is – it’s the thing we do when we want to find something out. It is what we are trained to do in a PhD program. It’s what comes before development.

The wonderful people at Wordnet define research as

Noun: systematic investigation to establish facts; a search for knowledge.

Verb: attempt to find out in a systematically and scientific manner; inquire into.

An etymologist might tell us that it comes from the Old French word cerchier, to search, with re- expressing intensive force. I guess it is saying that before 1400 in France, research meant to search really hard.

What do the headings mean?

Complex writing by Jonathan O’Donnell on Flickr.

Each funding body uses their own language, but they are all aiming to compare projects to find the best ones. Because of this, they often use relatively similar headings.

Here is what I think some of the more common headings on funding application forms are asking for.

Title: This is the first thing anybody will see. It should be a concise, memorable summary of your project. Don’t be too clever. If your title has a colon in it, that generally means that one half of your title is superfluous. Clever, but superfluous.

Research design: The funders want to be able to get a quick sense of what sort of research you are doing. Is it a clinical trial with 4,000 double-blind randomly selected men between the ages of 42 – 46? Is it a sociological inquiry into the epistemology of depression as expressed through the works of Goya? Provide one or two sentences that describe both the methodological field and the scope, preferably in numbers.

Project synopsis: This will be the blurb that the funding bodies put into the media release when they announce all the grants. It should build on the title to give a clear picture of what you are trying to achieve. Think like a copy-editor for this one.

Think like a kindergarten

‘Lion in the smoke’ by Jonathan O’Donnell on Flickr.

About every six months, someone I know asks me to help them to find funding for their community group / kindergarten / art project. Fundraising is a different process to applying for research funding.

However, thinking about how you fund a community project is a useful way to refresh your thinking about how to attract funding for your research program / centre / institute.

So, in that spirit, here is a new way to look at raising some funds.

First of all, most community projects are looking for an ongoing funding stream, rather than one-off project funding. A modest request might be looking for $120,000 – $180,000 per year, every year, to keep the program running. Often, they will get started with a one-off injection of funds and are looking to move to a continuous, reliable source of funding. This is possible, and very hard work.

Work with the community

Local problems need local solutions. Most community projects are located, by definition, in a community. One of the standard truths for finding long-term solutions is that you need local input to make it stick. You can’t impose solutions from the outside. So, work with the community to build a long-term local base of support. It will be hard for them to put in the time, and you are going to have to work hard to make it work, but it will be worth it in the long run.

Think like a sports club, community orchestra or kindergarten. Think about sausage sizzles, working bees, planning meetings, committee meetings… All of these things need volunteers. Chair, secretary, and treasurer are all volunteer positions that you will need to manage your money. This voluntary labour force can be drawn from your supporters. You need a mailing list, and probably a way to keep in touch with these people on a day-to-day basis (e.g. a Facebook group). This will need a volunteer to coordinate the contact list, too!

Kickstarter vs. the National Science Foundation

Detail from ‘Parade of Holonzki’ by Ingo Maurer and Eckard Knuth.

What is Kickstarter?

Kickstarter (USA), Pozible (Australia), Fondomat (Czech Republic), Sponsume (European Union), Peerbackers (worldwide) and a host of other crowdfunding solutions provide platforms where people can solicit funds for projects. There are specialised crowdfunding platforms for music, education (Funding4Learning), and even for research and invention (Rockethub). Anyone can contribute to the projects, and it often takes more than 1,000 contributors to provide $10 – $50 each before a project is fully funded.

It is a bit unfair to compare the National Science Foundation (NSF) to Kickstarter. One has an established proven model to “to promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare; to secure the national defense”. The other provides a new, disruptive model that is yet to demonstrate its resilience. Still, that’s what I’m going to do. I want shine a light on Kickstarter, throwing it’s shadow in stark relief against the edifice of the National Science Foundation.

Kickstarter is seen as a leader in this emerging field, in part because one project, the Pebble watch, has attracted more than $10,000,000 in funding. Ten million dollars… that’s serious money! Especially considering that they were asking for a budget of $100,000 to start with. While Pebble is an outlier, there are at least five other projects that have attracted over a million dollars. In 2011, Kickstarter funded almost 12,000 projects.

At a very basic level, the two models are not that different. Both provide funding for projects based on feedback from external people. Beyond that, everything else differs: the underlying idea; the way that you pitch your idea; the assessment process; the budget and the grant that you finally get.

The idea is different

The idea behind Kickstarter is different to funding agencies such as the National Science Foundation. You can see this clearly in the way that they describe themselves:

With an annual budget of about $6.9 billion (FY 2010), we [the National Science Foundation] are the funding source for approximately 20 percent of all federally supported basic research conducted by America’s colleges and universities. In many fields such as mathematics, computer science and the social sciences, NSF is the major source of federal backing. (About the National Science Foundation)

Kickstarter is not trying to fund basic research. It is trying to fund creativity.

Kickstarter is focused on creative projects. We’re a great way for artists, filmmakers, musicians, designers, writers, illustrators, explorers, curators, performers, and others to bring their projects, events, and dreams to life. (Kickstarter Basics)

The auspicious university

Dear reader: Let me save you some time. This post is written specifically for practice-based researchers.

If you aren’t a creative type (artist, writer, poet, dramaturge, designer), you can probably stop reading now. If you are, please keep reading – I need your help.

What’s an artist to do?

Seeking completion by Tseen on Flickr

I work with the cool people at the university: artists, designers, architects, social scientists, humanities scholars and educators – all sorts of excellent people.

Many of them are professionals in their chosen professions. That is, they are professional artists, designers, architects, poets, writers, etc. Their research is ‘practice-based’ research; they create stuff. The process of creation is an integral part of the research process. It meshes with their teaching, which is often studio-based, using workshops and mentoring rather than lectures and tutorials. These people fit very well into a university landscape.

Until it comes to funding.

Arts funding, like all funding, is built for the people who need it. It is organised around independent individuals (or small collaborations) or highly focused arts-based organisations (theatres, for example). These are the people who need the funds, so that is how the funds work.