1. Early Design
The Investigator provides a rough draft of the grant narrative to reviewers. The main emphasis is to give advice on basic framework that will strengthen the grant proposal, including:
- Is the theoretical framework clear?
- Are the aims clear, relevant to current healthcare issues and considered fundable by the sponsor?
- Does the research strategy support the aims?
- Will the research and resulting analysis support the theoretical framework?
- Is the research feasible?
- Has the investigator thoroughly reviewed the existing literature?
- Is there any pilot data that could support the project? Should the investigator consider a smaller study first to provide such data?
If the investigator has other, more specific questions about their research, they should pose them in advance so the reviewers can keep them in mind while reading the draft.
2. Proposal Refinement
The investigator provides a fairly complete draft of the research proposal, including the section on human subjects protection, (or vertebrate animal studies if that is the case). Reviewers provide detailed feedback about presentation and content to help the investigator refine the proposal prior to submission.
The reviewers should provide feedback on:
- Is the grant clear? Would a reviewer who has not seen the proposal before be able to understand it?
- Are the explanations of aims and research strategy complete?
- Is the human subjects or animal care section adequate? Are any potential concerns identified and dealt with?
- Does the investigator use any words, expressions or concepts that are not politically correct or accepted by others in the subject? Is there a particular idiomatic usage of a term in the field that they do not understand?
Any large structural problems that would prevent the grant from being funded should have already been identified. This type of modeling party is not appropriate if there has not already been a modeling party to correct review the overall structure of the grant. However, this review can also serve as a "last chance" to catch any such problems.
3. Resubmission of Proposal
If a proposal has not received funding, an investigator can seek a review to assist with the resubmission. The investigator provides the draft proposal and the sponsor's critiques to the reviewers. The reviewers will focus on:
- ways in which the grant can be edited in response to critiques;
- changes that would give the grant a higher funding priority;
- crafting an introduction that adequately responds to the critiques provided to the investigator.
4. Ongoing Study - Redesign of Analysis and Interpretation
This type of session is designed for ongoing or just completed studies, in which the investigator seeks advice and help in designing and interpreting ongoing analysis.
