Guidelines for Grant Application

Guidelines for Grant Application

Quantitative Method Core (QMC) at Quantitative Health Sciences (QHS) Department, UMASS Medical School

Guidelines for Grant Application

What we do

  1. Assist in refining specific aims particularly from the design and statistical analysis perspectives
  2. Help develop the study design
  3. Conduct power/sample size calculations
  4. Develop and writestatistical analysis plans
  5. Develop and write data management plan, as appropriate
  6. Developdata QA/QC plans
  7. Assist in developing data safety monitoring plans
  8. Propose necessary design and analysis personnel and efforts
  9. Other help with the design, conduct and interpretation of studies, as needed

When to contact us

  1. At least 2 months before submission deadline for new proposals, or as soon as RFA is published, whichever comes first – Starting early and allowing time for internal peer review will improve the proposal and its chance to be funded
  2. At least 1 month before submission deadline for resubmission, renewal or recycled proposals

Percent efforts guidelines

  1. For most R01level or equivalent (e.g., U01, R66/R31 etc.) grants:
  2. Minimum of an average of 10%per year for faculty statisticians for most R01-level or equivalent grants.
  3. Yearly average of 15% to 20% for faculty statisticiansfor projects with intensive statistical analysis (e.g., analyses with longitudinal data, many variables, missing data, clustered data, or multisite studies).
  4. Effort for statistical analysts (usually a master’s level statistician) should be included in addition to faculty statisticians; usually, this will mean at least 25% analyst effort for years when data analysis is conducted, and 5-10% efforts during the data collection stage for data QC analyses and producing reports (e.g., materials for DSMB meetings).
  5. Effort for database development and management from QMC should also be included if the PI’s research group does not have the expertise.
  6. Any exceptions must be discussed with the QMC leadership and pre-approved by the QHS department chair
  7. For smaller grants, we will estimate the level of support needed on a case-by-case basis. Under no circumstances will we agree to less than 5% support for any QMC employee during a grant year. For an R21, we typically require an average of 10% statistician effort per year.

Please note that our ability to provide free help to PIs in developing and writing their proposals is supported by limited, dedicated funding for that purpose;thus, all our post-award workmust be fully funded.

The minimum we need from you to begin working on your grant proposal

  1. On-line request at the QMC website
  2. In person meeting for new proposals to explain your research and proposal ideas
  3. A final version of specific aims should be provided before we draft the statistical analysis plans. Proposals with analysis plans that do not match the specific aimstypically are not scored well in study section.
  4. Pilot data that can be used to calculate effect sizes for power calculations; if pilot data are not available, then you need tohelp finddata relating to plausible effect sizes in the literature
  5. Collaboration with the faculty statistician to propose percent efforts for the QMC study team,which QHS’ financial administratorswill use as they prepare the QMC budget.
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