In the book I mentioned last week, Foundations of Grant Writing: A Systemic Approach Based on Experience, the authors (Walker and Pascoe) make the point that in a grant, you need to be able to make a case and they offer some different ways to design your case. They also suggest that PIs talk to lawyers about how they design their cases to convince a judge and jury to get some new perspective on designing their case.
In developing an argument, you have two core pieces: your claim and the premises that support that claim.Walker and Pascoe suggest that in building a case, you begin by brainstorming a diverse set of premises. What are all the needs that will be filled, benefits realized, and disasters averted by your research project being completed? Think about it from a financial, societal, moral, and health perspective to be sure you're not missing something. After this brainstorming phase, begin to organize these premises. The authors suggest using deductive logic in the overview (going from broad to specific premises).
Walker and Pascoe also outline several approaches to creating your case that I summarize below.
Linear, Deductive
In using this approach, you begin by identifying your central claim, "rank-ordering" your premises, making sure that they are clear, they flow, and generally move from broad statements of justification to more specific, ending with your central claim, which your readers should arrive at naturally, based on your deductive path.
Question-Answer Case Argument
In this approach, you begin your grant outlining a number of questions that get to the heart of what your project is addressing. You then use literature and your narrative to provide answers to these questions and guide your reader to the conclusion that your project is needed as a next step in responding to the issue outlined.
Review, Critique, and Solve
This approach begins with the literature and what's been done in your area. You then critique this work, highlighting gaps in the body of work and showing how your project will address the gap(s).
Theory-action
For this approach, you start by outlining the theoretical framework and background in which your work is rooted, show how your research will use and build on this theory to produce specific outcomes. This approach works well when the result of your research might be policy change.
In thinking about your grant as making a case or an argument for your research, it can offer you a venue for really demonstrating the importance of your work and the passion you have for it. Imagine you were in a court room, or better yet, standing before your review panel. How would you convince them?
Resources
Foundations of Grant Writing: A Systemic Approach Based on Experience - Walker & Pascoe, 2015, p. 54-67
Friday, September 25, 2015
Friday, September 11, 2015
If it's important, say it again
I'm reviewing a new grant-writing book out of the University of Oregon: Foundations of Grant Writing: A Systemic Approach Based on Experience (Walker & Pascoe, 2015). In the book, the authors suggest that in grant writing, it is important to say important things more than once, but that there is a fine line between re-emphasis and redundancy. You don't want to annoy your reviewers by moving into broken record territory.
They suggest instead that grant writers should employ creative redundancy. Creative redundancy is when you convey the same points to your reader in a slightly different way so that your reader catches the point and understands its importance but isn't sensing deja vu, reading the exact same point again.
Grant writing in particular is a genre where writers are often in danger of being redundant. With different sections of the grant asking for something similar, you could be tempted to cut and paste. But resist this urge, remembering that although it may be annoying to have to write something similar in your project description as in your project overview, reviewers will be equally annoyed to read the same thing over again and think that you're wasting their time. As one of our seasoned faculty members once said, the number one rule in grant writing is not to annoy the reviewers.
Other grant writers have suggested that when describing the problem that you're solving in a grant to cite national statistics around consequences to society, economics, health, etc. and in a subsequent section, reemphasize how bad your problem is by offering similar international statistics or even relating a short human interest story.
By using creative redundancy, you make it easy for your reviewers to understand what is so important about your project, and you don't underestimate them or make them feel underestimated by making them read the same thing over again. Remember, most reviewers are skimming your grant, and it's easy to miss something important. But, once you've hooked a reviewer and they do delve into your grant, you want to continue pulling them in with new and intriguing information that reinforces the need for your research.
Resources:
Foundations of Grant Writing: A Systemic Approach Based on Experience - Walker & Pascoe
Great Grant Writing - M.J. Murdoch Charitable Trust
They suggest instead that grant writers should employ creative redundancy. Creative redundancy is when you convey the same points to your reader in a slightly different way so that your reader catches the point and understands its importance but isn't sensing deja vu, reading the exact same point again.
Grant writing in particular is a genre where writers are often in danger of being redundant. With different sections of the grant asking for something similar, you could be tempted to cut and paste. But resist this urge, remembering that although it may be annoying to have to write something similar in your project description as in your project overview, reviewers will be equally annoyed to read the same thing over again and think that you're wasting their time. As one of our seasoned faculty members once said, the number one rule in grant writing is not to annoy the reviewers.
Other grant writers have suggested that when describing the problem that you're solving in a grant to cite national statistics around consequences to society, economics, health, etc. and in a subsequent section, reemphasize how bad your problem is by offering similar international statistics or even relating a short human interest story.
By using creative redundancy, you make it easy for your reviewers to understand what is so important about your project, and you don't underestimate them or make them feel underestimated by making them read the same thing over again. Remember, most reviewers are skimming your grant, and it's easy to miss something important. But, once you've hooked a reviewer and they do delve into your grant, you want to continue pulling them in with new and intriguing information that reinforces the need for your research.
Resources:
Foundations of Grant Writing: A Systemic Approach Based on Experience - Walker & Pascoe
Great Grant Writing - M.J. Murdoch Charitable Trust
Friday, September 4, 2015
Paragraph Structure and Organization
Oftentimes, writers break to a new paragraph without a lot of thought. When you have a new idea, start a new paragraph is the guideline under which most of us operate. Yet, when we think about it from the reader's perspective, when a paragraph does not contain a complete thought or when a new paragraph makes a giant leap to a new subject without warning, our heads are left spinning!
So, as writers, there are a couple of things we can do to keep our readers from getting lost or frustrated. Using the mnemonic device MEAL, we can remember what should be in most paragraphs...
M - ain idea: This is your topic sentence; it sets up your reader to know what the paragraph is about
E - vidence: Of course, most main ideas need a little justification, so your evidence portion is a couple of sentences that back up your main idea.
A - nalysis: You're writing about this topic, because you have something to say about it, so what is your take on the main idea and the evidence you've cited?
L - ink or Last thought: This is a sentence or two where you conclude your thoughts and/or provide a linking sentence to the next paragraph.
Let's look at an example from an NIH award abstract:
Main Evidence Analysis Link/Last thought
Excessive anxiety and fear leads to anxiety disorders, which impact many aspects of life, from the interpersonal to professional spheres. Although each anxiety disorder has different symptoms, they all share a core feature: mal-adaptive expression of high levels of anxiety. In our study, we will study how the brain suppresses anxiety. Prior studies showed the amygdala is largely responsible for generating high anxiety and fear, while the ventral medial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) decreases these behaviors, possibly by inhibiting amygdala output. Indeed, in humans higher vmPFC activation correlates with lower amygdala activation and decreased anxiety. These data suggest the vmPFC-amygdala pathway may decrease anxiety and fear, but they rely on correlative measures, and can't directly test this hypothesis. We used optogenetics to directly test if the vmPFC-amygdala projection suppresses anxiety and fear.
Remarkably, optogenetic activation of the vmPFC-amygdala pathway robustly inhibits innate anxiety and learned fear, while inhibition of this pathway increases anxiety....
As with any writing rule, there are exceptions and easily-readable paragraphs that leave out one component or another. Yet, when you pull all of the paragraphs together in a section, they should include all of the MEAL components pretty regularly.
In terms of paragraph organization, Otto Yang, in his book, Guide to Effective Grant Writing: How to Write a Successful NIH Grant Application, offers a technique to better construct and organize your paragraphs. For one section, take the first line of every paragraph and put them together to see if those lead sentences alone give you an understanding of the piece. This is important especially for grant-writing where reviewers often skim the numerous proposals they review. Giving your reviewers clear sign posts at the start of a paragraph will be much appreciated.
Although these techniques are helpful when you're writing, often they're more useful to apply when you are re-reading and revising. You've already gotten your thoughts down and they seem to flow, but perhaps you'll realize in making revisions that your reader will have to read half-way through many of your paragraphs before they understand your main point. In this case, it may serve you and your reader well to apply some paragraph revisions.
Resources:
Paragraphing with the MEAL Plan - Capella University
Paragraphs - University of North Carolina Chapel Hill Writing Center
So, as writers, there are a couple of things we can do to keep our readers from getting lost or frustrated. Using the mnemonic device MEAL, we can remember what should be in most paragraphs...
M - ain idea: This is your topic sentence; it sets up your reader to know what the paragraph is about
E - vidence: Of course, most main ideas need a little justification, so your evidence portion is a couple of sentences that back up your main idea.
A - nalysis: You're writing about this topic, because you have something to say about it, so what is your take on the main idea and the evidence you've cited?
L - ink or Last thought: This is a sentence or two where you conclude your thoughts and/or provide a linking sentence to the next paragraph.
Let's look at an example from an NIH award abstract:
Main Evidence Analysis Link/Last thought
Excessive anxiety and fear leads to anxiety disorders, which impact many aspects of life, from the interpersonal to professional spheres. Although each anxiety disorder has different symptoms, they all share a core feature: mal-adaptive expression of high levels of anxiety. In our study, we will study how the brain suppresses anxiety. Prior studies showed the amygdala is largely responsible for generating high anxiety and fear, while the ventral medial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) decreases these behaviors, possibly by inhibiting amygdala output. Indeed, in humans higher vmPFC activation correlates with lower amygdala activation and decreased anxiety. These data suggest the vmPFC-amygdala pathway may decrease anxiety and fear, but they rely on correlative measures, and can't directly test this hypothesis. We used optogenetics to directly test if the vmPFC-amygdala projection suppresses anxiety and fear.
Remarkably, optogenetic activation of the vmPFC-amygdala pathway robustly inhibits innate anxiety and learned fear, while inhibition of this pathway increases anxiety....
As with any writing rule, there are exceptions and easily-readable paragraphs that leave out one component or another. Yet, when you pull all of the paragraphs together in a section, they should include all of the MEAL components pretty regularly.
In terms of paragraph organization, Otto Yang, in his book, Guide to Effective Grant Writing: How to Write a Successful NIH Grant Application, offers a technique to better construct and organize your paragraphs. For one section, take the first line of every paragraph and put them together to see if those lead sentences alone give you an understanding of the piece. This is important especially for grant-writing where reviewers often skim the numerous proposals they review. Giving your reviewers clear sign posts at the start of a paragraph will be much appreciated.
Although these techniques are helpful when you're writing, often they're more useful to apply when you are re-reading and revising. You've already gotten your thoughts down and they seem to flow, but perhaps you'll realize in making revisions that your reader will have to read half-way through many of your paragraphs before they understand your main point. In this case, it may serve you and your reader well to apply some paragraph revisions.
Resources:
Paragraphing with the MEAL Plan - Capella University
Paragraphs - University of North Carolina Chapel Hill Writing Center
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