William T. Grant Scholars Program FORECAST

William T. Grant Scholars Program

FORECAST

Status: ACTIVE
Funder: William T Grant Foundation Inc
Amount: Up to US $425,000
Last Updated: July 17, 2025

Summary

The William T. Grant Scholars Program provides crucial support for early-career researchers aiming to expand their expertise through innovative research and mentoring. This five-year program focuses on reducing inequality and improving the use of research evidence to benefit young people in the U.S. By emphasizing the development of new disciplines and methods, the program encourages applicants to take bold risks in their research trajectories, ultimately fostering a supportive academic community.

Overview

The William T. Grant Scholars Program The William T. Grant Scholars Program supports career development for promising early-career researchers. The program funds five-year research and mentoring plans that significantly expand researchers’ expertise in new disciplines, methods, and content areas. Applicants should have a track record of conducting high-quality research and an interest in pursuing a significant shift in their trajectories as researchers. We recognize that early-career researchers are rarely given incentives or support to take measured risks in their work, so this award includes a mentoring component, as well as a supportive academic community. Awards are based on applicants’ potential to become influential researchers, as well as their plans to expand their expertise in new and significant ways. The application should make a cohesive argument for how the applicant will expand his or her expertise. The research plan should evolve in conjunction with the development of new expertise, and the mentoring plan should describe how the proposed mentors will support applicants in acquiring that expertise. Proposed research plans must address questions that are relevant to policy and practice in the Foundation’s focus areas. Focus Areas The Foundation’s mission is to support research to improve the lives of young people ages 5-25 in the United States. We pursue this mission by supporting research within two focus areas. Researchers interested in applying for a William T. Grant Scholars Award must select one focus area: Reducing Inequality In this focus area, we support studies that aim to build, test, or increase understanding of programs, policies, or practices to reduce inequality in the academic, social, behavioral, or economic outcomes of young people, especially on the basis of race, ethnicity, economic standing, language minority status, or immigrant origins. Studies on reducing inequality should aim to build, test, or increase understanding of programs, policies, or practices to reduce inequality in youth outcomes. We welcome descriptive studies that clarify mechanisms for reducing inequality or elucidate how or why a specific program, policy, or practice operates to reduce inequality. We also welcome intervention studies that examine attempts to reduce inequality. In addition, we seek studies that improve the measurement of inequality in ways that can enhance the work of researchers, practitioners, or policymakers. The common thread across all of this work, however, is a distinct and explicit focus on reducing inequality—one that goes beyond describing the causes or consequences of unequal outcomes and, instead, identifies leverage points for reducing inequality. Improving the Use of Research Evidence In this focus area, we support research to identify, build, and test strategies to ensure that research evidence is used in ways that benefit youth. We are particularly interested in research on improving the use of research evidence by state and local decision makers, mid-level managers, and intermediaries. Studies on improving the use of research evidence should identify, build, and test strategies to ensure that research evidence is used in ways that benefit youth. We welcome ideas from social scientists across a range of disciplines, fields, and methodologies that can advance their own disciplines and fields and reveal insights about ways to improve the production and use of research evidence. Measures also are needed to capture changes in the nature and degree of research use. We welcome investigations about research use in various systems, including justice, child welfare, mental health, and education. Research teams have drawn on existing conceptual and empirical work from political science, communication science, knowledge mobilization, implementation science, organizational psychology and other areas related to the use of research for improvement, impact, and change in research, policy, and practice institutions. Critical perspectives that inform studies’ research questions, methods, and interpretation of findings are also welcome. Broadening the theoretical perspectives used to study ways to improving the usefulness, use, and impact of research evidence may create a new frontier of important research.

Eligibility

We've imported the main document for this grant to give you an overview. You can learn more about this opportunity by visiting the funder's website. Eligible OrganizationsGrants are made to organizations, not individuals. Grants are limited, without exception, to tax-exempt organizations. A copy of the Internal Revenue Service tax-exempt status determination letter is required from each applying organization. Eligible ApplicantsApplicants must be nominated by their institutions. Major divisions (e.g., College of Arts and Sciences, Medical School) of an institution may nominate only one applicant each year. In addition to the eligibility criteria below, deans and directors of those divisions should refer to the Selection Criteria (pp. 32-36) to aid them in choosing their nominees. Applicants of any discipline are eligible.Applicants must have received their terminal degree within seven years of submitting their application. We calculate this by adding seven years to the date the doctoral degree was conferred. In medicine, the seven-year maximum is dated from the completion of the first residency.Applicants must be employed in career-ladder positions. For many applicants, this means holding a tenure-track position in a university. Applicants in other types of organizations should be in positions in which there is a pathway to advancement in a research career at the organization and the organization is fiscally responsible for the applicant’s position. The award may not be used as a post-doctoral fellowship.Applicants outside the United States are eligible. As with U.S. applicants, they must pursue research that has compelling policy or practice implications for youth in the United States.

Application Details

William T. Grant
Scholars Program
2025 Application Guidelines
Updated January 2025
Online Application Opens:
March 26, 2025, 3 PM EST
Mentor and Reference Letter Deadline:
June 11, 2025, 3 PM EST
Application Deadline:
July 1, 2025, 3 PM EST
Announcement of Awards:
March 2026

Contents
Program Overview 01
Focus Areas 03
Awards 08
Eligibility 10
Application Requirements 11
Review Criteria 16
Application Review Process 21
Scholars Selection Committee 22
Scholars Classes 24
Appendix A: Useful Links 29
Appendix B: Special Interest 30
II

Program Overview
The William T. Grant Scholars Program supports career development for promising
early-career researchers. The program funds five-year research and mentoring plans
that significantly expand researchers’ expertise in new disciplines, methods, and
content areas.
Applicants should have a track record of conducting high-quality research and
an interest in pursuing a significant shift in their trajectories as researchers. We
recognize that early-career researchers are rarely given incentives or support to take
measured risks in their work, so this award includes a mentoring component, as well
as a supportive academic community.
01

Jayanti Owens and Terrance Green,
Class of 2025
02

Focus Areas
The Foundation supports research in two distinct focus areas: 1) Reducing inequality
in youth outcomes, and 2) Improving the use of research evidence in policy and
practice. Proposed research must address questions that align with one of these areas.
Focus Area: Reducing Inequality
In this focus area, we fund research studies that aim to build, test, or increase
understanding of programs, policies, or practices to reduce inequality in the
academic, social, behavioral, or economic outcomes of young people ages 5–25 in
the United States, along dimensions of race, ethnicity, economic standing, sexual or
gender minority status, language minority status, or immigrant origins.
Research Interests
Our research interests in this focus area center on studies that examine ways to
reduce inequality in youth outcomes. We welcome descriptive studies that clarify
mechanisms for reducing inequality or elucidate how or why a specific program,
policy, or practice operates to reduce inequality. We also welcome intervention
studies that examine attempts to reduce inequality. Finally, we welcome studies
that improve the measurement of inequality in ways that can enhance the work of
researchers, practitioners, or policy-makers.
Recognizing that findings about programs and practices that reduce inequality will
have limited societal impact until the structures that create inequality in the first
place have been transformed, the Foundation is particularly interested in research to
uproot systemic racism and the structural foundations of inequality that limit the life
chances of young people. (For more information, see Appendix B.)
NOTE
While we value research on the causes and consequences of inequality, we do not
fund this work. Instead, we support research that informs or examines a policy,
program, or practice response that can be implemented through an organization,
institution, or system.
03

We invite studies from a range of disciplines, fields, and methods, and we encourage
investigations into various youth-serving systems, including justice, housing, child
welfare, mental health, and education.
Proposals for research on reducing inequality must:
1. Identify a specific inequality in youth outcomes.
We are especially interested in research to reduce inequality in academic, social,
behavioral, or economic outcomes.
• Show that outcomes are unequal in a brief discussion of existing literature.
• Highlight the main explanations for the unequal outcomes that are relevant for
your study.
2. Make a convincing case for the dimension(s) of inequality the study will
address.
We are especially interested in research to reduce inequality along the dimensions
of race, ethnicity, economic standing, sexual or gender minority status, language
minority status, or immigrant origin status.
• Be very specific in naming the groups on which the study will focus. Avoid vague
terms such as “at-risk youth” or “vulnerable youth.”
• Offer a well-developed conceptualization of inequality. Avoid treating dimensions
of inequality (e.g., race, economic standing) as variables without providing
conceptual and/or theoretical insight into why and how the identified inequality
exists.
• Research that focuses on a dimension other than race, ethnicity, economic
standing, sexual or gender minority status, language minority status, or immigrant
origins must be in intersection with one of these dimensions.
3. Articulate how findings from your research will help build, test, or increase
understanding of a program, policy, or practice to reduce the specific
inequality that you have identified.
• Draw on extant theoretical and empirical literature to provide a rationale for why
the specific programs, policies, or practices under study will equalize outcomes
between groups or improve outcomes of a particular group. In other words, specify
your theory of change.
• Identify how the study will investigate this rationale to determine whether it
holds up to empirical scrutiny.
04

Focus Area: Improving the Use of Research Evidence
In this focus area, we support research on strategies focused on improving the use of
research evidence in ways that benefit young people ages 5-25 in the United States.
We want to know what it takes to get research used by decision-makers and what
happens when research is used. We support studies that pursue one of these broad
questions.
While an extensive body of knowledge provides a rich understanding of specific
conditions that foster the use of research evidence, we lack robust, validated
strategies for cultivating them. What is required to create structural and social
conditions that support research use? What infrastructure is needed, and what will it
look like? What supports and incentives foster research use? And, ultimately, how do
youth outcomes fare when research evidence is used? This is where new research can
make a difference.
Research Interests
Our research interests in this focus area center on studies that examine strategies to
improve the use, usefulness, and impact of evidence in ways that benefit young people
ages 5-25 in the United States. We welcome impact studies that test strategies for
improving research use as well as whether improving research use leads to improved
youth outcomes. We also welcome descriptive studies that reveal the strategies,
mechanisms, or conditions for improving research use. Finally, we welcome
measurement studies that explore how to construct and implement valid and reliable
measures of research use.
NOTE
We are particularly interested in research on ways to improve the use of research
evidence by state and local policymakers, mid-level managers, community
organizers, and intermediaries. These decision-makers play important roles in
deciding which programs, practices, and tools to adopt; deliberating ways to improve
existing services; shaping the conditions for implementation; and making resource
allocation decisions.
We invite studies from a range of disciplines, fields, and methods, and we encourage
investigations into various youth-serving systems, including justice, housing, child
welfare, mental health, and education. Previous studies have drawn on conceptual
and empirical work from political science, communication science, knowledge
mobilization, implementation science, organizational psychology, and other areas.
Finally, we welcome critical perspectives that inform studies’ research questions,
methods, and interpretation of findings.
05

In this focus area, we welcome studies that pursue one of two aims:
1. Building, identifying, or testing ways to improve the use of existing
research evidence
This may include:
• Studies of strategies, mechanisms, or conditions that foster more routine and
constructive uses of existing research evidence by decision-makers.
• Studies that test the effects of deliberate efforts to improve routine and beneficial
uses of research in decision-making.
• Studies to identify the relationships and organizational structures that lead to the
prioritization of decision-makers’ needs in developing research agendas.
• Studies that examine ways to optimize organized collaborations among
researchers, decision-makers, intermediaries, and other stakeholders to benefit
youth
○ For example, prior work suggests that decision-makers often lack the
institutional resources and some of the requisite skills to seek out and use
research, and certain organizational norms and routines can help overcome
those barriers. Studies might examine efforts to alter the decision-making
environment by comparing the effectiveness of different ways (e.g., technical
assistance, research-practice partnerships, cross-agency teams, etc.) to
connect existing research with decision-makers.
2. Testing whether strategies that improve the use of research evidence in
turn improve decision-making and youth outcomes
This may include:
• Studies that examine the impact of research use on youth outcomes and the
conditions under which using research evidence improves outcomes.
○ The notion that using research will improve youth outcomes is a longstanding
assumption, but there is little evidence to validate it. We suspect that the im-
pact of research on outcomes may depend on a number of conditions, includ-
ing the quality of the research and the quality of research use. One hypothesis
is that the quality of the research and the quality of research use will work
synergistically to yield strong outcomes for youth.
• Studies to identify and test other conditions under which using research evidence
improves youth outcomes
○ For example, recent federal policies have instituted mandates and incentives
to increase the adoption of programs with evidence of effectiveness from
randomized controlled trials, with the expectation that the use of these
programs will lead to better outcomes. Do these policies actually increase the
use of those programs and improve child outcomes?
06

NOTE
These research interests call for a range of methods, including experimental or obser-
vational research designs, comparative case studies, or systematic reviews.
• Where appropriate, consider using existing methods, measures, and analytic tools
for assessing research use so that your findings can be compared and aggregat-
ed across studies (see Gitomer and Crouse [2019] Studying the Use of Research
Evidence: A Review of Methods: http://wtgrantfoundation.org/studying-the-use-
of-research-evidence-a-review-of-methods).
• Existing measures may not be well-suited for some inquiries, so you may also
propose to adapt existing measures or develop new ones. We strongly encour-
age applicants to utilize the open-access URE methods and measures repository
that shares existing protocols for collecting and analyzing data on research use
(https://www.uremethods.org/).
• Mixed-methods studies that collect and integrate multiple types of data may be
particularly advantageous given the difficulty of relying solely on self-report meth-
ods to study evidence use in complex deliberations and decision-making contexts.
07

Awards
• Award recipients are designated as William T. Grant Scholars.
• Each year, four to six Scholars are selected.
• Each Scholar receives exactly $425,000 over five years, including up to 7.5%
indirect costs.
• Awards begin July 1 of the award year and are made to the applicant’s institution.
• The award must not replace the institution’s current support of the applicant’s
research.
NOTE
The Foundation holds an annual retreat during the summer to support Scholars’
career development. Designed to foster a supportive environment in which Scholars
can improve their skills and work, the retreat allows Scholars to discuss works-
in-progress and receive constructive feedback on the challenges they face in
conducting their projects. The retreat consists of workshops centered on Scholars’
projects, research design and methods issues, and professional development.
The meeting is attended by Scholars, Scholars Selection Committee members,
and Foundation staff and Board members. Scholars are also invited to attend
other Foundation-sponsored workshops on topics relevant to their work, such as
mixed methods, reducing inequality, and the use of research evidence in policy and
practice.
Scholars may apply for an additional award to mentor junior researchers of color.
The announcement and criteria for funding are distributed annually to eligible
Scholars. Our goals for the mentoring grant program are two-fold. First, we seek to
strengthen the mentoring received by Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and Asian or Pacific
Islander American junior researchers and to position them for professional success.
Second, we want to support William T. Grant Scholars and principal investigators in
developing a stronger understanding of the career development issues facing their
junior colleagues of color and to strengthen their mentoring relationships with them.
In the longer term, we hope this grant program will increase the number of strong,
well-networked researchers of color doing research on the Foundation’s interests
and help foster more diverse, equitable, and inclusive academic environments.
08

Top, left to right: Siwei Cheng,
Class of 2028; Anna Haskins,
Class of 2024; Bottom:
NaLette Brodnax, Class of
2028
09

Eligibility
Eligible Organizations
• The Foundation makes grants only to tax-exempt organizations. We do not make
grants to individuals.
○ We encourage proposals from organizations that are under-represented
among grantee institutions, including Historically Black Colleges and Univer-
sities, Hispanic-serving Institutions, Tribal Colleges and Universities, Alaska
Native-Serving Institutions, Native Hawaiian-Serving Institutions, and Asian
American Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institutions.
Eligible Applicants
• Applicants must be nominated by their institutions. Major divisions of an
institution (e.g., College of Arts and Sciences, Medical School) may nominate
only one applicant each year. In addition to the eligibility criteria below, deans
and directors of those divisions should refer to the Review Criteria to aid them in
choosing their nominees. Applicants of any discipline are eligible.
• Applicants must have received their doctorate within seven years of submitting
their application. We calculate this by adding seven to the year the doctorate was
conferred. In medicine, the seven-year maximum is dated from the completion
of the first residency. The month in which the degree was conferred or residency
completed does not matter for this calculation.
• Applicants must be employed in career-ladder positions. For many applicants, this
means holding a tenure-track position in a university. Applicants in other types of
organizations should be in positions in which there is a pathway to advancement
in a research career at the organization and the organization is fiscally responsible
for the applicant’s position. The award may not be used as a post-doctoral
fellowship.
• Applicants outside the United States are eligible. As with U.S. applicants, they
must pursue research that has compelling policy or practice implications for
youth in the United States.
• We strive to support a diverse group of researchers in terms of race, ethnicity,
gender, and seniority, and we encourage research projects led by Black or African
American, Indigenous, Latinx, and/or Asian or Pacific Islander American
researchers.
10

Application Requirements
NOTE
The Foundation accepts applications only through our online application system,
which is accessible through our website. Instructions for creating and submitting
your application are also available online. All uploaded documents should be format-
ted as follows: 12-point Times New Roman font, single-spaced text with a line space
between each paragraph, numbered pages, and 1-inch margins on all sides.
All applications must include the following materials:
Mentor and Reference Letters
Mentor and reference letters are due by June 11, 2025. We recommend beginning the
online application early to give mentors and references ample time to complete their
sections. You may continue to other sections of the application while waiting for your
mentors and references to submit their letters online, but you will not be able to sub-
mit your application until all letters are received.
Mentor letters
Applicants propose one to two mentors for the first two years of the award. Each pro-
posed mentor must submit a letter. Mentor letters are not recommendations, and appli-
cants should discourage cursory letters of support. The letter should include:
• A brief assessment of the applicant’s research plan, and a summation of the
applicant’s potential, strengths, and areas for growth.
• A discussion of current relationship with the applicant and how the award will
add significant value beyond what would normally occur in the relationship.
• An explanation of the expertise the mentor will help the applicant acquire and the
mentoring activities that will be undertaken.
• A persuasive rationale that the types of activities and time commitments are
appropriate for developing the proposed expertise. (Activities generally include
direct interactions with applicants but can also include indirect support such as
facilitating access to new professional networks, readings, or training opportunities.)
• A description of how the mentor and applicant will interact (e.g., in-person, email,
phone), the frequency of that interaction, and how potential barriers such as
distance and busy schedules will be addressed.
• Confirmation of willingness to complete annual reports for the award (mentors
receive an honorarium of $500 upon receipt of reports).
11

Riana Elyse Anderson, Class of 2026
12

Reference Letters
Three letters of recommendation must be submitted from colleagues, supervisors,
or the department/division chairperson who nominates the applicant, respectively.
Proposed mentors may not submit recommendation letters.
Budget
Using the form included in the online application, provide budget information for five
years. The total budget should be exactly $425,000 (including the combined direct
and indirect costs for the full grant period). Indirect costs may not exceed 7.5 percent
of total direct costs.
Requests to fund the recipient’s salary must not exceed 50 percent of the total
salary received from the sponsoring institution. The portion of the grant used for
salary must be equivalent to the time made available for research by this award. The
remainder of funds may be used to support research-related work. (The Foundation
pays expenses related to the Scholars’ participation in Foundation-sponsored
meetings.)
Budget Justification Form
Complete and upload the Foundation’s budget justification form, which can be found
within the Uploads tab of the online application.
Abridged Curriculum Vitae
Use the Foundation’s form on the website.
Full Curriculum Vitae
Abstract (6 pages maximum)
Use the Foundation’s form on the website. Do not edit or delete instructions from the
form. Abstracts are a critical part of the application, and Foundation staff use them
to screen applications. In addition, Selection Committee members will review the
abstracts of all finalists but will not read all the full applications. We advise applicants
to include sufficient details about the research sample, methods, and designs for all
reviewers to be assured of the quality of the proposed research.
13

Full Research and Mentoring Plan (40 pages maximum)
The five-year research plan (20 pages maximum) should include one or more research
projects and provide convincing evidence that the projects meet the Review Criteria.
The project descriptions should include:
• the unique contribution of the research
• its significance in terms of policy and/or practice
• a brief literature review
• research design and methodology
• data sources and collection procedures
• data analysis plans
• plans for protection of human subjects.
The mentoring plan (4 pages maximum) must be developed in conjunction with the
proposed mentors and must meet all Review Criteria. Applicants should describe a
systematic plan with detailed descriptions of the following:
• applicant’s current areas of expertise, and the new areas of expertise that will be
developed during the award
• the mentoring activities designed to develop the new areas of expertise
• the rationale for the proposed mentors, the applicant’s current relationship with
each, and how the award will add significant value to the proposed relationship
• how the applicant and mentors will interact (e.g., in-person, email, phone), how
often, around what substantive issues, and how barriers such as distance and busy
schedules will be handled.
Plans should also include:
• a bibliography (8 pages maximum)
• appendices (8 pages maximum).
NOTE
The Foundation is committed to helping Scholars navigate their way through
successful mentoring relationships. The following resources can be found on our
website and are provided to aid applicants in creating strong mentoring plans:
Maximizing Mentoring: A Guide for Building Strong Relationships; Pay it Forward:
Guidance for Mentoring Junior Scholars; and Moving it Forward: The Power of
Mentoring, and How Universities Can Confront Institutional Barriers Facing Junior
Researchers of Color. The latter two focus on personal and institutional strategies
to help Scholars become stronger mentors but may also provide insights on being
mentored. (See: https://wtgrantfoundation.org/funding/william-t-grant-scholars-
program/applicant-resources#mentoring-resources.)
14

Publications 1 and 2 (20 pages maximum, each)
Submitted publications should be journal articles, chapters, or research reports that
exemplify the applicant’s research. Ideally, the publications are relevant to the pro-
posed research. The documents can be published or in press.
Nominating Statement
This statement from the Dean or chairperson of the nominating division should
describe why the applicant was selected; an assessment of the applicant’s plan; the
applicant’s current and expected future roles in the division; the supporting resources
available; the applicant’s current source and amount of salary; and the appointment,
promotion, and institutional support plans for the applicant, including a guarantee
that 50 percent of the applicant’s paid time will be devoted to research. (Successful
examples of nominating statements can be found on the Foundation’s website.)
Endorsement of Project
This document should come from the appropriate institutional office and personnel
(e.g., Office of Sponsored Research, chief administrative officer), contain general in-
formation about the applicant, and confirm that the institution is aware the applicant
is submitting the proposal.
Letter of Independence of Multiple Applicants (if applicable)
If an institution nominates more than one applicant, a central administrative officer
must submit confirmation that the applicants represent distinct schools or major
divisions (e.g., College of Arts and Sciences, Medical School, major division of a non-
profit) of the institution.
Resubmission Statement (if applicable)
Applicants who have applied previously should describe their response to reviewer
comments on the prior application and the major ways this application differs
from the prior one. There are no specific guidelines for the resubmission statement
with respect to format or length. Most applicants approach these like they would a
response to reviewers for a journal article submission, whether formatted as a memo,
a letter, or a document with “Resubmission Statement” at the top. Applicants should
prepare the statement in whatever way best suits the nature of their revisions.
15

Review Criteria
NOTE
Selection is based on applicants’ potential to become influential researchers, as well
as their plans to expand their expertise in new and significant ways. The application
should make a cohesive argument for how the applicant will expand their expertise.
The research plan should evolve in conjunction with the development of new
expertise, and the mentoring plan should describe how the proposed mentors will
support applicants in acquiring that expertise.
Applicant
• Applicant demonstrates potential to become an influential researcher.
• Prior training and publications indicate the applicant’s ability to conduct and
communicate creative, sophisticated research.
• Applicant has a promising track record of first authored, high-quality empirical
publications in peer-reviewed outlets. The quality of publications is more
important than the quantity.
• Applicant will significantly expand their expertise through this award. The
applicant has identified area(s) in which the award will appreciably expand their
expertise and has provided specific details in the research and mentoring plans.
Expansion of expertise can involve a different discipline, method, and/or content
area than the applicants’ prior research and training.
Research Plan
• Research plan aligns with one of the Foundation’s focus areas.
○ Proposed research on reducing inequality should aim to build, test, or increase
understanding of a program, policy, or practice to reduce inequality in the
academic, social, behavioral, or economic outcomes of young people ages 5–25
in the United States.
○ Proposed research on improving the use of research evidence should inform
strategies to improve the use of research evidence in ways that benefit young
people ages 5–25 in the United States.
• Proposals reflect a mastery of relevant theory and empirical findings, and clearly
state the theoretical and empirical contributions they will make to the existing
research base.
16

Top, left to right: William
Schneider, Class of 2026;
Rosanna Aybar, William T.
Grant Foundation; Bottom:
Theresa Stewart-Ambo,
Class of 2027
17

• Projects may focus on either generating or testing theory, depending on the state
of knowledge about a topic.
• Although we do not expect that any one project will or should impact policy or
practice, the findings should have relevance for policy or practice.
• Research plan reflects high standards of evidence and rigorous methods
commensurate with the proposal’s goals. The latter years or projects of the
research plan may, by necessity, be described in less detail than those of the first
few, but successful applicants provide enough specificity for reviewers to be
assured of the rigor and feasibility of the plan.
• Research designs, methods, and analysis plans clearly fit the research questions
under study.
○ Discussions of case selection, sampling, and measurement include a compel-
ling rationale that they are well-suited to address the research questions or
hypotheses. For example, samples are appropriate in size and composition
to answer the study’s questions. Qualitative case selection—whether critical,
comparative, or otherwise—are appropriate to answer the proposed questions.
○ The quantitative and/or qualitative analysis plan demonstrate awareness of
the strengths and limits of the specific analytic techniques and how they will
be applied in the current project.
○ If proposing mixed methods, plans for integrating the methods and data are
clear and compelling.
○ Where relevant, there is attention to generalizability of findings and to statisti-
cal power to detect meaningful effects.
• Research plan demonstrates adequate consideration of the gender, ethnic, and
cultural appropriateness of concepts, methods, and measures.
• Research plan is feasible. The work can be successfully completed given the
resources and time frame. Some research plans require additional funding, and in
those cases, applicants have viable plans for acquiring that support.
• Research plan is cohesive, and multiple studies (if proposed) are well-integrated.
• Research plan will significantly extend the applicant’s expertise in new and
significant ways. Applicant provides specific details about how the research
activities will stretch their expertise.
18