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How to write a research plan: Step-by-step guide

Last updated

30 January 2024

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Today’s businesses and institutions rely on data and analytics to inform their product and service decisions. These metrics influence how organizations stay competitive and inspire innovation. However, gathering data and insights requires carefully constructed research, and every research project needs a roadmap. This is where a research plan comes into play.

Read this step-by-step guide for writing a detailed research plan that can apply to any project, whether it’s scientific, educational, or business-related.

• What is a research plan?

A research plan is a documented overview of a project in its entirety, from end to end. It details the research efforts, participants, and methods needed, along with any anticipated results. It also outlines the project’s goals and mission, creating layers of steps to achieve those goals within a specified timeline.

Without a research plan, you and your team are flying blind, potentially wasting time and resources to pursue research without structured guidance.

The principal investigator, or PI, is responsible for facilitating the research oversight. They will create the research plan and inform team members and stakeholders of every detail relating to the project. The PI will also use the research plan to inform decision-making throughout the project.

• Why do you need a research plan?

Create a research plan before starting any official research to maximize every effort in pursuing and collecting the research data. Crucially, the plan will model the activities needed at each phase of the research project .

Like any roadmap, a research plan serves as a valuable tool providing direction for those involved in the project—both internally and externally. It will keep you and your immediate team organized and task-focused while also providing necessary definitions and timelines so you can execute your project initiatives with full understanding and transparency.

External stakeholders appreciate a working research plan because it’s a great communication tool, documenting progress and changing dynamics as they arise. Any participants of your planned research sessions will be informed about the purpose of your study, while the exercises will be based on the key messaging outlined in the official plan.

Here are some of the benefits of creating a research plan document for every project:

Project organization and structure

Well-informed participants

All stakeholders and teams align in support of the project

Clearly defined project definitions and purposes

Distractions are eliminated, prioritizing task focus

Timely management of individual task schedules and roles

Costly reworks are avoided

• What should a research plan include?

The different aspects of your research plan will depend on the nature of the project. However, most official research plan documents will include the core elements below. Each aims to define the problem statement , devising an official plan for seeking a solution.

Specific project goals and individual objectives

Ideal strategies or methods for reaching those goals

Required resources

Descriptions of the target audience, sample sizes , demographics, and scopes

Key performance indicators (KPIs)

Project background

Research and testing support

Preliminary studies and progress reporting mechanisms

Cost estimates and change order processes

Depending on the research project’s size and scope, your research plan could be brief—perhaps only a few pages of documented plans. Alternatively, it could be a fully comprehensive report. Either way, it’s an essential first step in dictating your project’s facilitation in the most efficient and effective way.

• How to write a research plan for your project

When you start writing your research plan, aim to be detailed about each step, requirement, and idea. The more time you spend curating your research plan, the more precise your research execution efforts will be.

Account for every potential scenario, and be sure to address each and every aspect of the research.

Consider following this flow to develop a great research plan for your project:

Define your project’s purpose

Start by defining your project’s purpose. Identify what your project aims to accomplish and what you are researching. Remember to use clear language.

Thinking about the project’s purpose will help you set realistic goals and inform how you divide tasks and assign responsibilities. These individual tasks will be your stepping stones to reach your overarching goal.

Additionally, you’ll want to identify the specific problem, the usability metrics needed, and the intended solutions.

Know the following three things about your project’s purpose before you outline anything else:

What you’re doing

Why you’re doing it

What you expect from it

Identify individual objectives

With your overarching project objectives in place, you can identify any individual goals or steps needed to reach those objectives. Break them down into phases or steps. You can work backward from the project goal and identify every process required to facilitate it.

Be mindful to identify each unique task so that you can assign responsibilities to various team members. At this point in your research plan development, you’ll also want to assign priority to those smaller, more manageable steps and phases that require more immediate or dedicated attention.

Select research methods

Once you have outlined your goals, objectives, steps, and tasks, it’s time to drill down on selecting research methods . You’ll want to leverage specific research strategies and processes. When you know what methods will help you reach your goals, you and your teams will have direction to perform and execute your assigned tasks.

Research methods might include any of the following:

User interviews : this is a qualitative research method where researchers engage with participants in one-on-one or group conversations. The aim is to gather insights into their experiences, preferences, and opinions to uncover patterns, trends, and data.

Field studies : this approach allows for a contextual understanding of behaviors, interactions, and processes in real-world settings. It involves the researcher immersing themselves in the field, conducting observations, interviews, or experiments to gather in-depth insights.

Card sorting : participants categorize information by sorting content cards into groups based on their perceived similarities. You might use this process to gain insights into participants’ mental models and preferences when navigating or organizing information on websites, apps, or other systems.

Focus groups : use organized discussions among select groups of participants to provide relevant views and experiences about a particular topic.

Diary studies : ask participants to record their experiences, thoughts, and activities in a diary over a specified period. This method provides a deeper understanding of user experiences, uncovers patterns, and identifies areas for improvement.

Five-second testing: participants are shown a design, such as a web page or interface, for just five seconds. They then answer questions about their initial impressions and recall, allowing you to evaluate the design’s effectiveness.

Surveys : get feedback from participant groups with structured surveys. You can use online forms, telephone interviews, or paper questionnaires to reveal trends, patterns, and correlations.

Tree testing : tree testing involves researching web assets through the lens of findability and navigability. Participants are given a textual representation of the site’s hierarchy (the “tree”) and asked to locate specific information or complete tasks by selecting paths.

Usability testing : ask participants to interact with a product, website, or application to evaluate its ease of use. This method enables you to uncover areas for improvement in digital key feature functionality by observing participants using the product.

Live website testing: research and collect analytics that outlines the design, usability, and performance efficiencies of a website in real time.

There are no limits to the number of research methods you could use within your project. Just make sure your research methods help you determine the following:

What do you plan to do with the research findings?

What decisions will this research inform? How can your stakeholders leverage the research data and results?

Recruit participants and allocate tasks

Next, identify the participants needed to complete the research and the resources required to complete the tasks. Different people will be proficient at different tasks, and having a task allocation plan will allow everything to run smoothly.

Prepare a thorough project summary

Every well-designed research plan will feature a project summary. This official summary will guide your research alongside its communications or messaging. You’ll use the summary while recruiting participants and during stakeholder meetings. It can also be useful when conducting field studies.

Ensure this summary includes all the elements of your research project . Separate the steps into an easily explainable piece of text that includes the following:

An introduction: the message you’ll deliver to participants about the interview, pre-planned questioning, and testing tasks.

Interview questions: prepare questions you intend to ask participants as part of your research study, guiding the sessions from start to finish.

An exit message: draft messaging your teams will use to conclude testing or survey sessions. These should include the next steps and express gratitude for the participant’s time.

Create a realistic timeline

While your project might already have a deadline or a results timeline in place, you’ll need to consider the time needed to execute it effectively.

Realistically outline the time needed to properly execute each supporting phase of research and implementation. And, as you evaluate the necessary schedules, be sure to include additional time for achieving each milestone in case any changes or unexpected delays arise.

For this part of your research plan, you might find it helpful to create visuals to ensure your research team and stakeholders fully understand the information.

Determine how to present your results

A research plan must also describe how you intend to present your results. Depending on the nature of your project and its goals, you might dedicate one team member (the PI) or assume responsibility for communicating the findings yourself.

In this part of the research plan, you’ll articulate how you’ll share the results. Detail any materials you’ll use, such as:

Presentations and slides

A project report booklet

A project findings pamphlet

Documents with key takeaways and statistics

Graphic visuals to support your findings

• Format your research plan

As you create your research plan, you can enjoy a little creative freedom. A plan can assume many forms, so format it how you see fit. Determine the best layout based on your specific project, intended communications, and the preferences of your teams and stakeholders.

Find format inspiration among the following layouts:

Written outlines

Narrative storytelling

Visual mapping

Graphic timelines

Remember, the research plan format you choose will be subject to change and adaptation as your research and findings unfold. However, your final format should ideally outline questions, problems, opportunities, and expectations.

• Research plan example

Imagine you’ve been tasked with finding out how to get more customers to order takeout from an online food delivery platform. The goal is to improve satisfaction and retain existing customers. You set out to discover why more people aren’t ordering and what it is they do want to order or experience. 

You identify the need for a research project that helps you understand what drives customer loyalty . But before you jump in and start calling past customers, you need to develop a research plan—the roadmap that provides focus, clarity, and realistic details to the project.

Here’s an example outline of a research plan you might put together:

Project title

Project members involved in the research plan

Purpose of the project (provide a summary of the research plan’s intent)

Objective 1 (provide a short description for each objective)

Objective 2

Objective 3

Proposed timeline

Audience (detail the group you want to research, such as customers or non-customers)

Budget (how much you think it might cost to do the research)

Risk factors/contingencies (any potential risk factors that may impact the project’s success)

Remember, your research plan doesn’t have to reinvent the wheel—it just needs to fit your project’s unique needs and aims.

Customizing a research plan template

Some companies offer research plan templates to help get you started. However, it may make more sense to develop your own customized plan template. Be sure to include the core elements of a great research plan with your template layout, including the following:

Introductions to participants and stakeholders

Background problems and needs statement

Significance, ethics, and purpose

Research methods, questions, and designs

Preliminary beliefs and expectations

Implications and intended outcomes

Realistic timelines for each phase

Conclusion and presentations

How many pages should a research plan be?

Generally, a research plan can vary in length between 500 to 1,500 words. This is roughly three pages of content. More substantial projects will be 2,000 to 3,500 words, taking up four to seven pages of planning documents.

What is the difference between a research plan and a research proposal?

A research plan is a roadmap to success for research teams. A research proposal, on the other hand, is a dissertation aimed at convincing or earning the support of others. Both are relevant in creating a guide to follow to complete a project goal.

What are the seven steps to developing a research plan?

While each research project is different, it’s best to follow these seven general steps to create your research plan:

Defining the problem

Identifying goals

Choosing research methods

Recruiting participants

Preparing the brief or summary

Establishing task timelines

Defining how you will present the findings

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Writing the Research Plan for Your Academic Job Application

By Jason G. Gillmore, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Department of Chemistry, Hope College, Holland, MI

A research plan is more than a to-do list for this week in lab, or a manila folder full of ideas for maybe someday—at least if you are thinking of a tenure-track academic career in chemistry at virtually any bachelor’s or higher degree–granting institution in the country. A perusal of the academic job ads in C&EN every August–October will quickly reveal that most schools expect a cover letter (whether they say so or not), a CV, a teaching statement, and a research plan, along with reference letters and transcripts. So what is this document supposed to be, and why worry about it now when those job ads are still months away?

What Is a Research Plan?

A research plan is a thoughtful, compelling, well-written document that outlines your exciting, unique research ideas that you and your students will pursue over the next half decade or so to advance knowledge in your discipline and earn you grants, papers, speaking invitations, tenure, promotion, and a national reputation. It must be a document that people at the department you hope to join will (a) read, and (b) be suitably excited about to invite you for an interview.

That much I knew when I was asked to write this article. More specifics I only really knew for my own institution, Hope College (a research intensive undergraduate liberal arts college with no graduate program), and even there you might get a dozen nuanced opinions among my dozen colleagues. So I polled a broad cross-section of my network, spanning chemical subdisciplines at institutions ranging from small, teaching-centered liberal arts colleges to our nation’s elite research programs, such as Scripps and MIT. The responses certainly varied, but they did center on a few main themes, or illustrate a trend across institution types. In this article I’ll share those commonalities, while also encouraging you to be unafraid to contact a search committee chair with a few specific questions, especially for the institutions you are particularly excited about and feel might be the best fit for you.

How Many Projects Should You Have?

While more senior advisors and members of search committees may have gotten their jobs with a single research project, conventional wisdom these days is that you need two to three distinct but related projects. How closely related to one another they should be is a matter of debate, but almost everyone I asked felt that there should be some unifying technique, problem or theme to them. However, the projects should be sufficiently disparate that a failure of one key idea, strategy, or technique will not hamstring your other projects.

For this reason, many applicants wisely choose to identify:

• One project that is a safe bet—doable, fundable, publishable, good but not earthshaking science.
• A second project that is pie-in-the-sky with high risks and rewards.
• A third project that fits somewhere in the middle.

Having more than three projects is probably unrealistic. But even the safest project must be worth doing, and even the riskiest must appear to have a reasonable chance of working.

How Closely Connected Should Your Research Be with Your Past?

Your proposed research must do more than extend what you have already done. In most subdisciplines, you must be sufficiently removed from your postdoctoral or graduate work that you will not be lambasted for clinging to an advisor’s apron strings. After all, if it is such a good idea in their immediate area of interest, why aren’t they pursuing it?!?

But you also must be able to make the case for why your training makes this a good problem for you to study—how you bring a unique skill set as well as unique ideas to this research. The five years you will have to do, fund, and publish the research before crafting your tenure package will go by too fast for you to break into something entirely outside your realm of expertise.

Biochemistry is a partial exception to this advice—in this subdiscipline it is quite common to bring a project with you from a postdoc (or more rarely your Ph.D.) to start your independent career. However, you should still articulate your original contribution to, and unique angle on the work. It is also wise to be sure your advisor tells that same story in his or her letter and articulates support of your pursuing this research in your career as a genuinely independent scientist (and not merely someone who could be perceived as his or her latest "flunky" of a collaborator.)

Should You Discuss Potential Collaborators?

Regarding collaboration, tread lightly as a young scientist seeking or starting an independent career. Being someone with whom others can collaborate in the future is great. Relying on collaborators for the success of your projects is unwise. Be cautious about proposing to continue collaborations you already have (especially with past advisors) and about starting new ones where you might not be perceived as the lead PI. Also beware of presuming you can help advance the research of someone already in a department. Are they still there? Are they still doing that research? Do they actually want that help—or will they feel like you are criticizing or condescending to them, trying to scoop them, or seeking to ride their coattails? Some places will view collaboration very favorably, but the safest route is to cautiously float such ideas during interviews while presenting research plans that are exciting and achievable on your own.

How Do You Show Your Fit?

Some faculty advise tailoring every application packet document to every institution to which you apply, while others suggest tweaking only the cover letter. Certainly the cover letter is the document most suited to introducing yourself and making the case for how you are the perfect fit for the advertised position at that institution. So save your greatest degree of tailoring for your cover letter. It is nice if you can tweak a few sentences of other documents to highlight your fit to a specific school, so long as it is not contrived.

Now, if you are applying to widely different types of institutions, a few different sets of documents will certainly be necessary. The research plan that you target in the middle to get you a job at both Harvard University and Hope College will not get you an interview at either! There are different realities of resources, scope, scale, and timeline. Not that my colleagues and I at Hope cannot tackle research that is just as exciting as Harvard’s. However, we need to have enough of a niche or a unique angle both to endure the longer timeframe necessitated by smaller groups of undergraduate researchers and to ensure that we still stand out. Furthermore, we generally need to be able to do it with more limited resources. If you do not demonstrate that understanding, you will be dismissed out of hand. But at many large Ph.D. programs, any consideration of "niche" can be inferred as a lack of confidence or ambition.

Also, be aware that department Web pages (especially those several pages deep in the site, or maintained by individual faculty) can be woefully out-of-date. If something you are planning to say is contingent on something you read on their Web site, find a way to confirm it!

While the research plan is not the place to articulate start-up needs, you should consider instrumentation and other resources that will be necessary to get started, and where you will go for funding or resources down the road. This will come up in interviews, and hopefully you will eventually need these details to negotiate a start-up package.

Who Is Your Audience?

Your research plan should show the big picture clearly and excite a broad audience of chemists across your sub-discipline. At many educational institutions, everyone in the department will read the proposal critically, at least if you make the short list to interview. Even at departments that leave it all to a committee of the subdiscipline, subdisciplines can be broad and might even still have an outside member on the committee. And the committee needs to justify their actions to the department at large, as well as to deans, provosts, and others. So having at least the introduction and executive summaries of your projects comprehensible and compelling to those outside your discipline is highly advantageous.

Good science, written well, makes a good research plan. As you craft and refine your research plan, keep the following strategies, as well as your audience in mind:

• Begin the document with an abstract or executive summary that engages a broad audience and shows synergies among your projects. This should be one page or less, and you should probably write it last. This page is something you could manageably consider tailoring to each institution.
• Provide sufficient details and references to convince the experts you know your stuff and actually have a plan for what your group will be doing in the lab. Give details of first and key experiments, and backup plans or fallback positions for their riskiest aspects.
• Hook your readers with your own ideas fairly early in the document, then strike a balance between your own new ideas and the necessary well referenced background, precedents, and justification throughout. Propose a reasonable tentative timeline, if you can do so in no more than a paragraph or two, which shows how you envision spacing out the experiments within and among your projects. This may fit well into your executive summary
• Show how you will involve students (whether undergraduates, graduate students, an eventual postdoc or two, possibly even high schoolers if the school has that sort of outreach, depending on the institutions to which you are applying) and divide the projects among students.
• Highlight how your work will contribute to the education of these students. While this is especially important at schools with greater teaching missions, it can help set you apart even at research intensive institutions. After all, we all have to demonstrate “broader impacts” to our funding agencies!
• Include where you will pursue funding, as well as publication, if you can smoothly work it in. This is especially true if there is doubt about how you plan to target or "market" your research. Otherwise, it is appropriate to hold off until the interview to discuss this strategy.

So, How Long Should Your Research Plan Be?

Learn more on the Blog

Here is where the answers diverged the most and without a unifying trend across institutions. Bottom line, you need space to make your case, but even more, you need people to read what you write.

A single page abstract or executive summary of all your projects together provides you an opportunity to make the case for unifying themes yet distinct projects. It may also provide space to articulate a timeline. Indeed, many readers will only read this single page in each application, at least until winnowing down to a more manageable list of potential candidates. At the most elite institutions, there may be literally hundreds of applicants, scores of them entirely well-suited to the job.

While three to five pages per proposal was a common response (single spaced, in 11-point Arial or 12-point Times with one inch margins), including references (which should be accurate, appropriate, and current!), some of my busiest colleagues have said they will not read more than about three pages total. Only a few actually indicated they would read up to 12-15 pages for three projects. In my opinion, ten pages total for your research plans should be a fairly firm upper limit unless you are specifically told otherwise by a search committee, and then only if you have two to three distinct proposals.

Why Start Now?

Hopefully, this question has answered itself already! Your research plan needs to be a well thought out document that is an integrated part of applications tailored to each institution to which you apply. It must represent mature ideas that you have had time to refine through multiple revisions and a great deal of critical review from everyone you can get to read them. Moreover, you may need a few different sets of these, especially if you will be applying to a broad range of institutions. So add “write research plans” to this week’s to do list (and every week’s for the next few months) and start writing up the ideas in that manila folder into some genuine research plans. See which ones survive the process and rise to the top and you should be well prepared when the job ads begin to appear in C&EN in August!

Jason G. Gillmore , Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Chemistry at Hope College in Holland, MI. A native of New Jersey, he earned his B.S. (’96) and M.S. (’98) degrees in chemistry from Virginia Tech, and his Ph.D. (’03) in organic chemistry from the University of Rochester. After a short postdoctoral traineeship at Vanderbilt University, he joined the faculty at Hope in 2004. He has received the Dreyfus Start-up Award, Research Corporation Cottrell College Science Award, and NSF CAREER Award, and is currently on sabbatical as a Visiting Research Professor at Arizona State University. Professor Gillmore is the organizer of the Biennial Midwest Postdoc to PUI Professor (P3) Workshop co-sponsored by ACS, and a frequent panelist at the annual ACS Postdoc to Faculty (P2F) Workshops.

Other tips to help engage (or at least not turn off) your readers include:

• Avoid two-column formats.
• Avoid too-small fonts that hinder readability, especially as many will view the documents online rather than in print!
• Use good figures that are readable and broadly understandable!
• Use color as necessary but not gratuitously.

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• A Research Guide
• Research Paper Guide

How to Write a Research Plan

• Research plan definition
• Purpose of a research plan
• Research plan structure
• Step-by-step writing guide

Tips for creating a research plan

• Research plan examples

Research plan: definition and significance

What is the purpose of a research plan.

• Bridging gaps in the existing knowledge related to their subject.
• Reinforcing established research about their subject.
• Introducing insights that contribute to subject understanding.

Research plan structure & template

Introduction.

• What is the existing knowledge about the subject?
• What gaps remain unanswered?
• How will your research enrich understanding, practice, and policy?

Literature review

Expected results.

• Express how your research can challenge established theories in your field.
• Highlight how your work lays the groundwork for future research endeavors.
• Emphasize how your work can potentially address real-world problems.

5 Steps to crafting an effective research plan

Step 1: define the project purpose, step 2: select the research method, step 3: manage the task and timeline, step 4: write a summary, step 5: plan the result presentation.

• Brainstorm Collaboratively: Initiate a collective brainstorming session with peers or experts. Outline the essential questions that warrant exploration and answers within your research.
• Prioritize and Feasibility: Evaluate the list of questions and prioritize those that are achievable and important. Focus on questions that can realistically be addressed.
• Define Key Terminology: Define technical terms pertinent to your research, fostering a shared understanding. Ensure that terms like “church” or “unreached people group” are well-defined to prevent ambiguity.
• Organize your approach: Once well-acquainted with your institution’s regulations, organize each aspect of your research by these guidelines. Allocate appropriate word counts for different sections and components of your research paper.

Research plan example

• Writing a Research Paper
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• Research Paper Summary
• Research Paper Prospectus
• Research Paper Proposal
• Research Paper Format
• Research Paper Styles
• AMA Style Research Paper
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• Research Paper Structure
• Research Paper Cover Page
• Research Paper Abstract
• Research Paper Introduction
• Research Paper Body Paragraph
• Research Paper Literature Review
• Research Paper Background
• Research Paper Methods Section
• Research Paper Results Section
• Research Paper Discussion Section
• Research Paper Conclusion
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• Bibliography vs Works Cited vs References Page
• Research Paper Types
• What is Qualitative Research

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• How to Write a Research Proposal | Examples & Templates

How to Write a Research Proposal | Examples & Templates

Published on October 12, 2022 by Shona McCombes and Tegan George. Revised on November 21, 2023.

A research proposal describes what you will investigate, why it’s important, and how you will conduct your research.

The format of a research proposal varies between fields, but most proposals will contain at least these elements:

Introduction

Literature review.

• Research design

Reference list

While the sections may vary, the overall objective is always the same. A research proposal serves as a blueprint and guide for your research plan, helping you get organized and feel confident in the path forward you choose to take.

Table of contents

Research proposal purpose, research proposal examples, research design and methods, contribution to knowledge, research schedule, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about research proposals.

Academics often have to write research proposals to get funding for their projects. As a student, you might have to write a research proposal as part of a grad school application , or prior to starting your thesis or dissertation .

In addition to helping you figure out what your research can look like, a proposal can also serve to demonstrate why your project is worth pursuing to a funder, educational institution, or supervisor.

Research proposal length

The length of a research proposal can vary quite a bit. A bachelor’s or master’s thesis proposal can be just a few pages, while proposals for PhD dissertations or research funding are usually much longer and more detailed. Your supervisor can help you determine the best length for your work.

One trick to get started is to think of your proposal’s structure as a shorter version of your thesis or dissertation , only without the results , conclusion and discussion sections.

Download our research proposal template

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Professional editors proofread and edit your paper by focusing on:

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See an example

Writing a research proposal can be quite challenging, but a good starting point could be to look at some examples. We’ve included a few for you below.

• Example research proposal #1: “A Conceptual Framework for Scheduling Constraint Management”
• Example research proposal #2: “Medical Students as Mediators of Change in Tobacco Use”

Like your dissertation or thesis, the proposal will usually have a title page that includes:

• The proposed title of your project
• Your supervisor’s name
• Your institution and department

The first part of your proposal is the initial pitch for your project. Make sure it succinctly explains what you want to do and why.

Your introduction should:

• Introduce your topic
• Give necessary background and context
• Outline your  problem statement  and research questions

To guide your introduction , include information about:

• Who could have an interest in the topic (e.g., scientists, policymakers)
• How much is already known about the topic
• What is missing from this current knowledge
• What new insights your research will contribute
• Why you believe this research is worth doing

As you get started, it’s important to demonstrate that you’re familiar with the most important research on your topic. A strong literature review  shows your reader that your project has a solid foundation in existing knowledge or theory. It also shows that you’re not simply repeating what other people have already done or said, but rather using existing research as a jumping-off point for your own.

In this section, share exactly how your project will contribute to ongoing conversations in the field by:

• Comparing and contrasting the main theories, methods, and debates
• Examining the strengths and weaknesses of different approaches
• Explaining how will you build on, challenge, or synthesize prior scholarship

Following the literature review, restate your main  objectives . This brings the focus back to your own project. Next, your research design or methodology section will describe your overall approach, and the practical steps you will take to answer your research questions.

To finish your proposal on a strong note, explore the potential implications of your research for your field. Emphasize again what you aim to contribute and why it matters.

For example, your results might have implications for:

• Improving best practices
• Informing policymaking decisions
• Strengthening a theory or model
• Challenging popular or scientific beliefs
• Creating a basis for future research

Last but not least, your research proposal must include correct citations for every source you have used, compiled in a reference list . To create citations quickly and easily, you can use our free APA citation generator .

Some institutions or funders require a detailed timeline of the project, asking you to forecast what you will do at each stage and how long it may take. While not always required, be sure to check the requirements of your project.

Here’s an example schedule to help you get started. You can also download a template at the button below.

Download our research schedule template

If you are applying for research funding, chances are you will have to include a detailed budget. This shows your estimates of how much each part of your project will cost.

Make sure to check what type of costs the funding body will agree to cover. For each item, include:

• Cost : exactly how much money do you need?
• Justification : why is this cost necessary to complete the research?
• Source : how did you calculate the amount?

To determine your budget, think about:

• Travel costs : do you need to go somewhere to collect your data? How will you get there, and how much time will you need? What will you do there (e.g., interviews, archival research)?
• Materials : do you need access to any tools or technologies?
• Help : do you need to hire any research assistants for the project? What will they do, and how much will you pay them?

If you want to know more about the research process , methodology , research bias , or statistics , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

Methodology

• Sampling methods
• Simple random sampling
• Stratified sampling
• Cluster sampling
• Likert scales
• Reproducibility

 Statistics

• Null hypothesis
• Statistical power
• Probability distribution
• Effect size
• Poisson distribution

Research bias

• Optimism bias
• Cognitive bias
• Implicit bias
• Hawthorne effect
• Anchoring bias
• Explicit bias

Once you’ve decided on your research objectives , you need to explain them in your paper, at the end of your problem statement .

Keep your research objectives clear and concise, and use appropriate verbs to accurately convey the work that you will carry out for each one.

I will compare …

A research aim is a broad statement indicating the general purpose of your research project. It should appear in your introduction at the end of your problem statement , before your research objectives.

Research objectives are more specific than your research aim. They indicate the specific ways you’ll address the overarching aim.

A PhD, which is short for philosophiae doctor (doctor of philosophy in Latin), is the highest university degree that can be obtained. In a PhD, students spend 3–5 years writing a dissertation , which aims to make a significant, original contribution to current knowledge.

A PhD is intended to prepare students for a career as a researcher, whether that be in academia, the public sector, or the private sector.

A master’s is a 1- or 2-year graduate degree that can prepare you for a variety of careers.

All master’s involve graduate-level coursework. Some are research-intensive and intend to prepare students for further study in a PhD; these usually require their students to write a master’s thesis . Others focus on professional training for a specific career.

Critical thinking refers to the ability to evaluate information and to be aware of biases or assumptions, including your own.

Like information literacy , it involves evaluating arguments, identifying and solving problems in an objective and systematic way, and clearly communicating your ideas.

The best way to remember the difference between a research plan and a research proposal is that they have fundamentally different audiences. A research plan helps you, the researcher, organize your thoughts. On the other hand, a dissertation proposal or research proposal aims to convince others (e.g., a supervisor, a funding body, or a dissertation committee) that your research topic is relevant and worthy of being conducted.

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Research statement, what is a research statement.

The research statement (or statement of research interests) is a common component of academic job applications. It is a summary of your research accomplishments, current work, and future direction and potential of your work.

The statement can discuss specific issues such as:

• funding history and potential
• requirements for laboratory equipment and space and other resources
• potential research and industrial collaborations
• how your research contributes to your field
• future direction of your research

The research statement should be technical, but should be intelligible to all members of the department, including those outside your subdiscipline. So keep the “big picture” in mind. The strongest research statements present a readable, compelling, and realistic research agenda that fits well with the needs, facilities, and goals of the department.

Research statements can be weakened by:

• overly ambitious proposals
• lack of clear direction
• lack of big-picture focus
• inadequate attention to the needs and facilities of the department or position

Why a Research Statement?

• It conveys to search committees the pieces of your professional identity and charts the course of your scholarly journey.
• It communicates a sense that your research will follow logically from what you have done and that it will be different, important, and innovative.
• It gives a context for your research interests—Why does your research matter? The so what?
• It combines your achievements and current work with the proposal for upcoming research.
• areas of specialty and expertise
• potential to get funding
• academic strengths and abilities
• compatibility with the department or school
• ability to think and communicate like a serious scholar and/or scientist

Formatting of Research Statements

The goal of the research statement is to introduce yourself to a search committee, which will probably contain scientists both in and outside your field, and get them excited about your research. To encourage people to read it:

• make it one or two pages, three at most
• use informative section headings and subheadings
• use bullets
• use an easily readable font size
• make the margins a reasonable size

Organization of Research Statements

Think of the overarching theme guiding your main research subject area. Write an essay that lays out:

• The main theme(s) and why it is important and what specific skills you use to attack the problem.
• A few specific examples of problems you have already solved with success to build credibility and inform people outside your field about what you do.
• A discussion of the future direction of your research. This section should be really exciting to people both in and outside your field. Don’t sell yourself short; if you think your research could lead to answers for big important questions, say so!
• A final paragraph that gives a good overall impression of your research.

Writing Research Statements

• Avoid jargon. Make sure that you describe your research in language that many people outside your specific subject area can understand. Ask people both in and outside your field to read it before you send your application. A search committee won’t get excited about something they can’t understand.
• Write as clearly, concisely, and concretely as you can.
• Keep it at a summary level; give more detail in the job talk.
• Ask others to proofread it. Be sure there are no spelling errors.
• Convince the search committee not only that you are knowledgeable, but that you are the right person to carry out the research.
• Include information that sets you apart (e.g., publication in  Science, Nature,  or a prestigious journal in your field).
• What excites you about your research? Sound fresh.
• Include preliminary results and how to build on results.
• Point out how current faculty may become future partners.
• Acknowledge the work of others.
• Use language that shows you are an independent researcher.
• BUT focus on your research work, not yourself.
• Include potential funding partners and industrial collaborations. Be creative!
• Provide a summary of your research.
• Put in background material to give the context/relevance/significance of your research.
• List major findings, outcomes, and implications.
• Describe both current and planned (future) research.
• Communicate a sense that your research will follow logically from what you have done and that it will be unique, significant, and innovative (and easy to fund).

Describe Your Future Goals or Research Plans

• Major problem(s) you want to focus on in your research.
• The problem’s relevance and significance to the field.
• Your specific goals for the next three to five years, including potential impact and outcomes.
• If you know what a particular agency funds, you can name the agency and briefly outline a proposal.
• Give broad enough goals so that if one area doesn’t get funded, you can pursue other research goals and funding.

Identify Potential Funding Sources

• Almost every institution wants to know whether you’ll be able to get external funding for research.
• Try to provide some possible sources of funding for the research, such as NIH, NSF, foundations, private agencies.
• Mention past funding, if appropriate.

Be Realistic

There is a delicate balance between a realistic research statement where you promise to work on problems you really think you can solve and over-reaching or dabbling in too many subject areas. Select an over-arching theme for your research statement and leave miscellaneous ideas or projects out. Everyone knows that you will work on more than what you mention in this statement.

Consider Also Preparing a Longer Version

• A longer version (five–15 pages) can be brought to your interview. (Check with your advisor to see if this is necessary.)
• You may be asked to describe research plans and budget in detail at the campus interview. Be prepared.
• Include laboratory needs (how much budget you need for equipment, how many grad assistants, etc.) to start up the research.

Samples of Research Statements

To find sample research statements with content specific to your discipline, search on the internet for your discipline + “Research Statement.”

• University of Pennsylvania Sample Research Statement
• Advice on writing a Research Statement (Plan) from the journal  Science

• Enhancing Student Success
• Innovative Research
• Alumni Success
• About NC State

How to Construct a Compelling Research Statement

A research statement is a critical document for prospective faculty applicants. This document allows applicants to convey to their future colleagues the importance and impact of their past and, most importantly, future research. You as an applicant should use this document to lay out your planned research for the next few years, making sure to outline how your planned research contributes to your field.

Some general guidelines

(from Carleton University )

An effective research statement accomplishes three key goals:

• It clearly presents your scholarship in nonspecialist terms;
• It places your research in a broader context, scientifically and societally; and
• It lays out a clear road map for future accomplishments in the new setting (the institution to which you’re applying).

Another way to think about the success of your research statement is to consider whether, after reading it, a reader is able to answer these questions:

• What do you do (what are your major accomplishments; what techniques do you use; how have you added to your field)?
• Why is your work important (why should both other scientists and nonscientists care)?
• Where is it going in the future (what are the next steps; how will you carry them out in your new job; does your research plan meet the requirements for tenure at this institution)?

1. Make your statement reader-friendly

A typical faculty application call can easily receive 200+ applicants. As such, you need to make all your application documents reader-friendly. Use headings and subheadings to organize your ideas and leave white space between sections.

In addition, you may want to include figures and diagrams in your research statement that capture key findings or concepts so a reader can quickly determine what you are studying and why it is important. A wall of text in your research statement should be avoided at all costs. Rather, a research statement that is concise and thoughtfully laid out demonstrates to hiring committees that you can organize ideas in a coherent and easy-to-understand manner.

Also, this presentation demonstrates your ability to develop competitive funding applications (see more in next section), which is critical for success in a research-intensive faculty position.

2. Be sure to touch on the fundability of your planned research work

Another goal of your research statement is to make the case for why your planned research is fundable. You may get different opinions here, but I would recommend citing open or planned funding opportunities at federal agencies or other funders that you plan to submit to. You might also use open funding calls as a way to demonstrate that your planned research is in an area receiving funding prioritization by various agencies.

If you are looking for funding, check out this list of funding resources on my personal website. Another great way to look for funding is to use NIH Reporter and NSF award search .

3. Draft the statement and get feedback early and often

I can tell you from personal experience that it takes time to refine a strong research statement. I went on the faculty job market two years in a row and found my second year materials to be much stronger. You need time to read, review and reflect on your statements and documents to really make them stand out.

It is important to have your supervisor and other faculty read and give feedback on your critical application documents and especially your research statement. Also, finding peers to provide feedback and in return giving them feedback on their documents is very helpful. Seek out communities of support such as Future PI Slack to find peer reviewers (and get a lot of great application advice) if needed.

4. Share with nonexperts to assess your writing’s clarity

Additionally, you may want to consider sharing your job materials, including your research statement, with non-experts to assess clarity. For example, NC State’s Professional Development Team offers an Academic Packways: Gearing Up for Faculty program each year where you can get feedback on your application documents from individuals working in a variety of areas. You can also ask classmates and colleagues working in different areas to review your research statement. The more feedback you can receive on your materials through formal or informal means, the better.

5. Tailor your statement to the institution

It is critical in your research statement to mention how you will make use of core facilities or resources at the institution you are applying to. If you need particular research infrastructure to do your work and the institution has it, you should mention that in your statement. Something to the effect of: “The presence of the XXX core facility at YYY University will greatly facilitate my lab’s ability to investigate this important process.”

Mentioning core facilities and resources at the target institution shows you have done your research, which is critical in demonstrating your interest in that institution.

Finally, think about the resources available at the institution you are applying to. If you are applying to a primarily undergraduate-serving institution, you will want to be sure you propose a research program that could reasonably take place with undergraduate students, working mostly in the summer and utilizing core facilities that may be limited or require external collaborations.

Undergraduate-serving institutions will value research projects that meaningfully involve students. Proposing overly ambitious research at a primarily undergraduate institution is a recipe for rejection as the institution will read your application as out of touch … that either you didn’t do the work to research them or that you are applying to them as a “backup” to research-intensive positions.

You should carefully think about how to restructure your research statements if you are applying to both primarily undergraduate-serving and research-intensive institutions. For examples of how I framed my research statement for faculty applications at each type of institution, see my personal website ( undergraduate-serving ; research-intensive research statements).

6. Be yourself, not who you think the search committee wants

In the end, a research statement allows you to think critically about where you see your research going in the future. What are you excited about studying based on your previous work? How will you go about answering the unanswered questions in your field? What agencies and initiatives are funding your type of research? If you develop your research statement from these core questions, your passion and commitment to the work will surely shine through.

A closing thought: Be yourself, not who you think the search committee wants. If you try to frame yourself as someone you really aren’t, you are setting the hiring institution and you up for disappointment. You want a university to hire you because they like you, the work you have done, and the work you want to do, not some filtered or idealized version of you.

So, put your true self out there, and realize you want to find the right institutional fit for you and your research. This all takes time and effort. The earlier you start and the more reflection and feedback you get on your research statement and remaining application documents, the better you can present the true you to potential employers.

More Advice on Faculty Job Application Documents on ImPACKful

How to write a better academic cover letter

Tips on writing an effective teaching statement

More Resources

See here for samples of a variety of application materials from UCSF.

• Rules of the (Social Sciences & Humanities) Research Statement
• CMU’s Writing a Research Statement
• UW’s Academic Careers: Research Statements
• Developing a Winning Research Statement (UCSF)
• Academic Packways
• ImPACKful Tips

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Research statements for faculty job applications

The purpose of a research statement.

The main goal of a research statement is to walk the search committee through the evolution of your research, to highlight your research accomplishments, and to show where your research will be taking you next. To a certain extent, the next steps that you identify within your statement will also need to touch on how your research could benefit the institution to which you are applying. This might be in terms of grant money, faculty collaborations, involving students in your research, or developing new courses. Your CV will usually show a search committee where you have done your research, who your mentors have been, the titles of your various research projects, a list of your papers, and it may provide a very brief summary of what some of this research involves. However, there can be certain points of interest that a CV may not always address in enough detail.

• What got you interested in this research?
• What was the burning question that you set out to answer?
• What challenges did you encounter along the way, and how did you overcome these challenges?
• How can your research be applied?
• Why is your research important within your field?
• What direction will your research take you in next, and what new questions do you have?

While you may not have a good sense of where your research will ultimately lead you, you should have a sense of some of the possible destinations along the way. You want to be able to show a search committee that your research is moving forward and that you are moving forward along with it in terms of developing new skills and knowledge. Ultimately, your research statement should complement your cover letter, CV, and teaching philosophy to illustrate what makes you an ideal candidate for the job. The more clearly you can articulate the path your research has taken, and where it will take you in the future, the more convincing and interesting it will be to read.

Separate research statements are usually requested from researchers in engineering, social, physical, and life sciences, but can also be requested for researchers in the humanities. In many cases, however, the same information that is covered in the research statement is often integrated into the cover letter for many disciplines within the humanities and no separate research statement is requested within the job advertisement. Seek advice from current faculty and new hires about the conventions of your discipline if you are in doubt.

Timeline: Getting Started with Your Research Statement

You can think of a research statement as having three distinct parts. The first part will focus on your past research and can include the reasons you started your research, an explanation as to why the questions you originally asked are important in your field, and a summary some of the work you did to answer some of these early questions.

The middle part of the research statement focuses on your current research. How is this research different from previous work you have done, and what brought you to where you are today? You should still explain the questions you are trying to ask, and it is very important that you focus on some of the findings that you have (and cite some of the publications associated with these findings). In other words, do not talk about your research in abstract terms, make sure that you explain your actual results and findings (even if these may not be entirely complete when you are applying for faculty positions), and mention why these results are significant.

The final part of your research statement should build on the first two parts. Yes, you have asked good questions and used good methods to find some answers, but how will you now use this foundation to take you into your future? Since you are hoping that your future will be at one of the institutions to which you are applying, you should provide some convincing reasons why your future research will be possible at each institution, and why it will be beneficial to that institution and to their students.

While you are focusing on the past, present, and future or your research, and tailoring it to each institution, you should also think about the length of your statement and how detailed or specific you make the descriptions of your research. Think about who will be reading it. Will they all understand the jargon you are using? Are they experts in the subject, or experts in a range of related subjects? Can you go into very specific detail, or do you need to talk about your research in broader terms that make sense to people outside of your research field, focusing on the common ground that might exist? Additionally, you should make sure that your future research plans differ from those of your PI or advisor, as you need to be seen as an independent researcher. Identify 4-5 specific aims that can be divided into short-term and long-term goals. You can give some idea of a 5-year research plan that includes the studies you want to perform, but also mention your long-term plans so that the search committee knows that this is not a finite project.

Another important consideration when writing about your research is realizing that you do not perform research in a vacuum. When doing your research, you may have worked within a team environment at some point or sought out specific collaborations. You may have faced some serious challenges that required some creative problem-solving to overcome. While these aspects are not necessarily as important as your results and your papers or patents, they can help paint a picture of you as a well-rounded researcher who is likely to be successful in the future even if new problems arise, for example.

Follow these general steps to begin developing an effective research statement:

Step 1: Think about how and why you got started with your research. What motivated you to spend so much time on answering the questions you developed? If you can illustrate some of the enthusiasm you have for your subject, the search committee will likely assume that students and other faculty members will see this in you as well. People like to work with passionate and enthusiastic colleagues. Remember to focus on what you found, what questions you answered, and why your findings are significant. The research you completed in the past will have brought you to where you are today; also be sure to show how your research past and research present are connected. Explore some of the techniques and approaches you have successfully used in your research, and describe some of the challenges you overcame. What makes people interested in what you do, and how have you used your research as a tool for teaching or mentoring students? Integrating students into your research may be an important part of your future research at your target institutions. Conclude describing your current research by focusing on your findings, their importance, and what new questions they generate.

Step 2: Think about how you can tailor your research statement for each application. Familiarize yourself with the faculty at each institution, and explore the research that they have been performing. You should think about your future research in terms of the students at the institution. What opportunities can you imagine that would allow students to get involved in what you do to serve as a tool for teaching and training them, and to get them excited about your subject? Do not talk about your desire to work with graduate students if the institution only has undergraduates! You will also need to think about what equipment or resources that you might need to do your future research. Again, mention any resources that specific institutions have that you would be interested in utilizing (e.g., print materials, super electron microscopes, archived artwork). You can also mention what you hope to do with your current and future research in terms of publication (whether in journals or as a book); try to be as specific and honest as possible. Finally, be prepared to talk about how your future research can help bring in grants and other sources of funding, especially if you have a good track record of receiving awards and fellowships. Mention some grants that you know have been awarded to similar research, and state your intention to seek this type of funding.

Step 3: Ask faculty in your department if they are willing to share their own research statements with you. To a certain extent, there will be some subject-specific differences in what is expected from a research statement, and so it is always a good idea to see how others in your field have done it. You should try to draft your own research statement first before you review any statements shared with you. Your goal is to create a unique research statement that clearly highlights your abilities as a researcher.

Step 4: The research statement is typically a few (2-3) pages in length, depending on the number of images, illustrations, or graphs included.  Once you have completed the steps above, schedule an appointment with a career advisor to get feedback on your draft. You should also try to get faculty in your department to review your document if they are willing to do so.

Additional Resources

For further tips, tricks, and strategies for writing a research statement for faculty jobs, see the resources below:

• The PhD Career Training Platform is an eLearning platform with on-demand, self-paced modules that allow PhDs and postdocs to make informed decisions about their career path and learn successful job search strategies from other PhDs. Select the University of Pennsylvania from the drop-down menu, log in using your University ID, and click the “Faculty Careers” tab to learn more about application documents for a faculty job search.
• Writing an Effective Research Statement
• Research Statements for Humanities PhDs
• Tips to Get Started on Your Research Statement (video)

Explore other application documents:

FLEET LIBRARY | Research Guides

Rhode island school of design, create a research plan: research plan.

• Research Plan
• Literature Review
• Ulrich's Global Serials Directory
• Related Guides

A research plan is a framework that shows how you intend to approach your topic. The plan can take many forms: a written outline, a narrative, a visual/concept map or timeline. It's a document that will change and develop as you conduct your research. Components of a research plan

1. Research conceptualization - introduces your research question

2. Research methodology - describes your approach to the research question

3. Literature review, critical evaluation and synthesis - systematic approach to locating,

    reviewing and evaluating the work (text, exhibitions, critiques, etc) relating to your topic

4. Communication - geared toward an intended audience, shows evidence of your inquiry

Research conceptualization refers to the ability to identify specific research questions, problems or opportunities that are worthy of inquiry. Research conceptualization also includes the skills and discipline that go beyond the initial moment of conception, and which enable the researcher to formulate and develop an idea into something researchable ( Newbury 373).

Research methodology refers to the knowledge and skills required to select and apply appropriate methods to carry through the research project ( Newbury 374) .

Method describes a single mode of proceeding; methodology describes the overall process.

Method - a way of doing anything especially according to a defined and regular plan; a mode of procedure in any activity

Methodology - the study of the direction and implications of empirical research, or the sustainability of techniques employed in it; a method or body of methods used in a particular field of study or activity *Browse a list of research methodology books  or this guide on Art & Design Research

Literature Review, critical evaluation & synthesis

A literature review is a systematic approach to locating, reviewing, and evaluating the published work and work in progress of scholars, researchers, and practitioners on a given topic.

Critical evaluation and synthesis is the ability to handle (or process) existing sources. It includes knowledge of the sources of literature and contextual research field within which the person is working ( Newbury 373).

Literature reviews are done for many reasons and situations. Here's a short list:

Sources to consult while conducting a literature review:

Online catalogs of local, regional, national, and special libraries

meta-catalogs such as worldcat , Art Discovery Group , europeana , world digital library or RIBA

subject-specific online article databases (such as the Avery Index, JSTOR, Project Muse)

digital institutional repositories such as Digital Commons @RISD ; see Registry of Open Access Repositories

Open Access Resources recommended by RISD Research LIbrarians

works cited in scholarly books and articles

print bibliographies

the internet-locate major nonprofit, research institutes, museum, university, and government websites

search google scholar to locate grey literature & referenced citations

trade and scholarly publishers

fellow scholars and peers

Communication                              

Communication refers to the ability to

• structure a coherent line of inquiry
• communicate your findings to your intended audience
• make skilled use of visual material to express ideas for presentations, writing, and the creation of exhibitions ( Newbury 374)

Research plan framework: Newbury, Darren. "Research Training in the Creative Arts and Design." The Routledge Companion to Research in the Arts . Ed. Michael Biggs and Henrik Karlsson. New York: Routledge, 2010. 368-87. Print.

About the author

Except where otherwise noted, this guide is subject to a Creative Commons Attribution license

source document

  Routledge Companion to Research in the Arts

• Next: Literature Review >>
• Last Updated: Aug 15, 2024 1:29 AM
• URL: https://risd.libguides.com/researchplan

Faculty Application: Research Statement

Criteria for success.

• Clearly articulate your brand.
• Demonstrate the impact of your past work.
• Show that you are credible to carry out your proposed future research.
• Articulate the importance of your research vision.
• Match the standards within the department to which you are applying.
• Show that you are a good fit for the position.
• Polish. Avoid typos.

Structure Diagram

The typical structure and length of research statements vary widely across fields. If you are unsure of what is typical in the field where you are applying, be sure to check with someone who is familiar with the standards. 

In electrical engineering and computer science, research statements are usually around three pages long with a focus on past and current work, often following the structure in the diagram below.

Identify Your Purpose

Your cover letter and CV outline your past work and hint at a general direction of your future work but do not go into detail. Therefore, the purpose of a research statement is to emphasize the importance of your past work and describe your research vision. Both your past/current work and future work presented in the research statement should reflect your branding statement .  

In EECS, faculty research statements focus on past/current work. However, it is important to also include your vision for the future, which should build on your previous work. This statement should convince the committee that your future work is important, relevant, and feasible. The future work section should go beyond direct extensions of your doctoral or postdoctoral work; it should cover a 5-10 year span. Proposed future work should show scientific growth and convince the committee that you propose strong research directions for your future group. Your research statement can also include possible funding sources and collaborations.

Analyze Your Audience

Your audience is a faculty search committee, which is made up of professors from across the department, not just the ones in your research area. A typical search committee member is probably very busy reviewing lots of applications, and hence may not read your statement in depth until you make it to later rounds of the hiring process.

Knowing details of the job posting and what the faculty search committee is looking for will help you tailor your statement. If the call is for a specific research area (e.g., language processing, bioinformatics, algorithms, machine learning, systems), it is beneficial to motivate and emphasize the importance of your work in the language of that area whenever possible.

Structure your statement

Although there is usually no mandated structure for a research statement, it can be very helpful to a reader if the content flows naturally.

Use the hourglass concept. It makes a compelling introduction if a research statement presents motivation starting from the high-level picture and then zooms in to the main topic(s) of research. This is helpful for two reasons. First, a research statement is typically read by committee members from several research areas, so starting with a high-level picture gives members a gentle guidance to the meat of a work. Second, providing general motivation helps in showing how different pieces of research fit in a big puzzle.

After talking about specific results, the story typically zooms back out by discussing impact and future directions. It is best if future work has some concrete research directions and also widens up to touch on a broader perspective of research plans.

The diagram below summarizes the hourglass concept and provides one potential flow of content.

Use good formatting to help retain focus . A successful research statement is typically organized into three main parts: Introduction and motivation; past work/achievements; and vision/future work. Each of these parts can be divided into subsections.

In addition, you can help a reader focus their attention on the important content by:

• making each section/paragraph title tell a message;
• using bullet points and itemization while listing;
• using bold or italics to emphasize important keywords or sentences. 

Some institutions set constraints on the format of research statements, primarily constraints on length . Make sure that your research statement is tailored to the guidelines. It is helpful to prepare two versions of your statement — a long one and a short one. The short version is usually the long one stripped of many details with the emphasis on high-level pictures and ideas.

Say who you are

Your research statement tells a story about you. Think who you want to be in the eyes of committee members (e.g., a programming languages person, a machine learning expert, a theory professor) and which of your achievements you want them to remember.

Make your research statement echo your branding one . A successful research statement builds a story around the author’s branding statement. A strong point is made if past and future work are echoes of the same brand. 

Successful candidates outline their research agenda before stating actual results and after providing a background. Sometimes this is done even before giving background and motivation. In the latter case, the research agenda is typically stated briefly, and then reiterated with more context after providing the background.

Show credibility for your future work by your past work

Your past work is an excellent way to illustrate that you are fit for the future work you are proposing. Refer to some of your past work when outlining feasibility of your proposed future directions. Even if you aim to change your field of research, your past experience should still serve as a justification for why you are well suited for the new line of work.

Dedicate space to your strongest results . Describe your strongest results in the most detail. If you want to mention many papers, organize them into several themes. A successful statement communicates how obtained results affect a field or a research community. Impact of papers can be shown by awards, high number of citations, or follow up papers by other research groups. A reader will have limited time to go over your statement, so make sure that the reader’s attention is spent on your most impactful work. Note that your strongest results do not necessarily have to be your most recent ones; they can even be several years old. Nevertheless, it is still a good idea to also mention some of your recent work as it shows that you have been active lately as well.

Importantly, a research statement should be a coherent story about ideas and impact, not only an overview of published articles. Hence, it is often the case that a research statement does not discuss all papers published or all work done by the applicant.

Use figures to support important claims . Consider including figures . They can be used to support your claims about your results and/or in the future work section to illustrate your research plans. A well-made figure can help the reader quickly understand your work, but figures also take up a large amount of space. Use figures carefully, only to draw attention to the most important points.

Devote time!

Getting out a job application package takes an indefinitely long time (writing, addressing feedback, polishing, addressing feedback … aaaand polishing)! Start early and invest time.

Get feedback . Your application package will be read by committee members that are not necessarily in your research area. It is thus important to get feedback about your research statement from colleagues with different backgrounds and seniority. Note that it might take time for other people to share their feedback (remember, others are busy as well!), so plan ahead.

MIT EECS affiliates can also make an appointment with a Communication Fellow to obtain additional feedback on their statements.

Resources and Annotated Examples

Amy zhang research statement.

Submitted in 2018-2019 by Amy Zhang, now faculty at University of Washington 1 MB

Elena Glassman Research Statement

Submitted in 2017-2018 by Elena Glassman, now faculty at Harvard University 2 MB

Write Your Research Plan

In this part, we give you detailed information about writing an effective Research Plan. We start with the importance and parameters of significance and innovation.

We then discuss how to focus the Research Plan, relying on the iterative process described in the Iterative Approach to Application Planning Checklist shown at Draft Specific Aims  and give you advice for filling out the forms.

You'll also learn the importance of having a well-organized, visually appealing application that avoids common missteps and the importance of preparing your just-in-time information early.

While this document is geared toward the basic research project grant, the R01, much of it is useful for other grant types.

Table of Contents

Research plan overview and your approach, craft a title, explain your aims, research strategy instructions, advice for a successful research strategy, graphics and video, significance, innovation, and approach, tracking for your budget, preliminary studies or progress report, referencing publications, review and finalize your research plan, abstract and narrative.

Your application's Research Plan has two sections:

• Specific Aims —a one-page statement of your objectives for the project.
• Research Strategy —a description of the rationale for your research and your experiments in 12 pages for an R01.

In your Specific Aims, you note the significance and innovation of your research; then list your two to three concrete objectives, your aims.

Your Research Strategy is the nuts and bolts of your application, where you describe your research rationale and the experiments you will conduct to accomplish each aim. Though how you organize it is largely up to you, NIH expects you to follow these guidelines.

• Organize using bold headers or an outline or numbering system—or both—that you use consistently throughout.
• Start each section with the appropriate header: Significance, Innovation, or Approach.
• Organize the Approach section around your Specific Aims.

Format of Your Research Plan

To write the Research Plan, you don't need the application forms. Write the text in your word processor, turn it into a PDF file, and upload it into the application form when it's final.

Because NIH may return your application if it doesn't meet all requirements, be sure to follow the rules for font, page limits, and more. Read the instructions at NIH’s Format Attachments .

For an R01, the Research Strategy can be up to 12 pages, plus one page for Specific Aims. Don't pad other sections with information that belongs in the Research Plan. NIH is on the lookout and may return your application to you if you try to evade page limits.

Follow Examples

As you read this page, look at our Sample Applications and More  to see some of the different strategies successful PIs use to create an outstanding Research Plan.

Keeping It All In Sync

Writing in a logical sequence will save you time.

Information you put in the Research Plan affects just about every other application part. You'll need to keep everything in sync as your plans evolve during the writing phase.

It's best to consider your writing as an iterative process. As you develop and finalize your experiments, you will go back and check other parts of the application to make sure everything is in sync: the "who, what, when, where, and how (much money)" as well as look again at the scope of your plans.

In that vein, writing in a logical sequence is a good approach that will save you time. We suggest proceeding in the following order:

• Create a provisional title.
• Write a draft of your Specific Aims.
• Start with your Significance and Innovation sections.
• Then draft the Approach section considering the personnel and skills you'll need for each step.
• Evaluate your Specific Aims and methods in light of your expected budget (for a new PI, it should be modest, probably under the $250,000 for NIH's modular budget).
• As you design experiments, reevaluate your hypothesis, aims, and title to make sure they still reflect your plans.
• Prepare your Abstract (a summary of your Specific Aims).
• Complete the other forms.

Even the smaller sections of your application need to be well-organized and readable so reviewers can readily grasp the information. If writing is not your forte, get help.

To view writing strategies for successful applications, see our Sample Applications and More . There are many ways to create a great application, so explore your options.

Within the character limit, include the important information to distinguish your project within the research area, your project's goals, and the research problem.

Giving your project a title at the outset can help you stay focused and avoid a meandering Research Plan. So you may want to launch your writing by creating a well-defined title.

NIH gives you a 200 character limit, but don’t feel obliged to use all of that allotment. Instead, we advise you to keep the title as succinct as possible while including the important information to distinguish your project within the research area. Make your title reflect your project's goals, the problem your project addresses, and possibly your approach to studying it. Make your title specific: saying you are studying lymphocyte trafficking is not informative enough.

For examples of strong titles, see our Sample Applications and More .

After you write a preliminary title, check that

• My title is specific, indicating at least the research area and the goals of my project.
• It is 200 characters or less.
• I use as simple language as possible.
• I state the research problem and, possibly, my approach to studying it.
• I use a different title for each of my applications. (Note: there are exceptions, for example, for a renewal—see Apply for Renewal  for details.)
• My title has appropriate keywords.

Later you may want to change your initial title. That's fine—at this point, it's just an aid to keep your plans focused.

Since all your reviewers read your Specific Aims, you want to excite them about your project.

If testing your hypothesis is the destination for your research, your Research Plan is the map that takes you there.

You'll start by writing the smaller part, the Specific Aims. Think of the one-page Specific Aims as a capsule of your Research Plan. Since all your reviewers read your Specific Aims, you want to excite them about your project.

For more on crafting your Specific Aims, see Draft Specific Aims .

Write a Narrative

Use at least half the page to provide the rationale and significance of your planned research. A good way to start is with a sentence that states your project's goals.

For the rest of the narrative, you will describe the significance of your research, and give your rationale for choosing the project. In some cases, you may want to explain why you did not take an alternative route.

Then, briefly describe your aims, and show how they build on your preliminary studies and your previous research. State your hypothesis.

If it is likely your application will be reviewed by a study section with broad expertise, summarize the status of research in your field and explain how your project fits in.

In the narrative part of the Specific Aims of many outstanding applications, people also used their aims to

• State the technologies they plan to use.
• Note their expertise to do a specific task or that of collaborators.
• Describe past accomplishments related to the project.
• Describe preliminary studies and new and highly relevant findings in the field.
• Explain their area's biology.
• Show how the aims relate to one another.
• Describe expected outcomes for each aim.
• Explain how they plan to interpret data from the aim’s efforts.
• Describe how to address potential pitfalls with contingency plans.

Depending on your situation, decide which items are important for you. For example, a new investigator would likely want to highlight preliminary data and qualifications to do the work.

Many people use bold or italics to emphasize items they want to bring to the reviewers' attention, such as the hypothesis or rationale.

Detail Your Aims

After the narrative, enter your aims as bold bullets, or stand-alone or run-on headers.

• State your plans using strong verbs like identify, define, quantify, establish, determine.
• Describe each aim in one to three sentences.
• Consider adding bullets under each aim to refine your objectives.

How focused should your aims be? Look at the example below.

Spot the Sample

Read the Specific Aims of the Application from Drs. Li and Samulski , "Enhance AAV Liver Transduction with Capsid Immune Evasion."

• Aim 1. Study the effect of adeno-associated virus (AAV) empty particles on AAV capsid antigen cross-presentation in vivo .
• Aim 2. Investigate AAV capsid antigen presentation following administration of AAV mutants and/or proteasome inhibitors for enhanced liver transduction in vivo .
• Aim 3. Isolate AAV chimeric capsids with human hepatocyte tropism and the capacity for cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTL) evasion.

After finishing the draft Specific Aims, check that

• I keep to the one-page limit.
• Each of my two or three aims is a narrowly focused, concrete objective I can achieve during the grant.
• They give a clear picture of how my project can generate knowledge that may improve human health.
• They show my project's importance to science, how it addresses a critical research opportunity that can move my field forward.
• My text states how my work is innovative.
• I describe the biology to the extent needed for my reviewers.
• I give a rationale for choosing the topic and approach.
• I tie the project to my preliminary data and other new findings in the field.
• I explicitly state my hypothesis and why testing it is important.
• My aims can test my hypothesis and are logical.
• I can design and lead the execution of two or three sets of experiments that will strive to accomplish each aim.
• As much as possible, I use language that an educated person without expertise can understand.
• My text has bullets, bolding, or headers so reviewers can easily spot my aims (and other key items).

For each element listed above, analyze your text and revise it until your Specific Aims hit all the key points you'd like to make.

After the list of aims, some people add a closing paragraph, emphasizing the significance of the work, their collaborators, or whatever else they want to focus reviewers' attention on.

Your Research Strategy is the bigger part of your application's Research Plan (the other part is the Specific Aims—discussed above.)

The Research Strategy is the nuts and bolts of your application, describing the rationale for your research and the experiments you will do to accomplish each aim. It is structured as follows:

• Significance
• You can either include this information as a subsection of Approach or integrate it into any or all of the three main sections.
• If you do the latter, be sure to mark the information clearly, for example, with a bold subhead.
• Possible other sections, for example, human subjects, vertebrate animals, select agents, and others (these do not count toward the page limit).

Though how you organize your application is largely up to you, NIH does want you to follow these guidelines:

• Add bold headers or an outlining or numbering system—or both—that you use consistently throughout.
• Start each of the Research Strategy's sections with a header: Significance, Innovation, and Approach.

For an R01, the Research Strategy is limited to 12 pages for the three main sections and the preliminary studies only. Other items are not included in the page limit.

Find instructions for R01s in the SF 424 Application Guide—go to NIH's SF 424 (R&R) Application and Electronic Submission Information for the generic SF 424 Application Guide or find it in your notice of funding opportunity (NOFO).

For most applications, you need to address Rigor and Reproducibility by describing the experimental design and methods you propose and how they will achieve robust and unbiased results. The requirement applies to research grant, career development, fellowship, and training applications.

If you're responding to an institute-specific program announcement (PA) (not a parent program announcement) or a request for applications (RFA), check the NIH Guide notice, which has additional information you need. Should it differ from the NOFO, go with the NIH Guide .

Also note that your application must meet the initiative's objectives and special requirements. NIAID program staff will check your application, and if it is not responsive to the announcement, your application will be returned to you without a review.

When writing your Research Strategy, your goal is to present a well-organized, visually appealing, and readable description of your proposed project. That means your writing should be streamlined and organized so your reviewers can readily grasp the information. If writing is not your forte, get help.

There are many ways to create an outstanding Research Plan, so explore your options.

What Success Looks Like

Your application's Research Plan is the map that shows your reviewers how you plan to test your hypothesis.

It not only lays out your experiments and expected outcomes, but must also convince your reviewers of your likely success by allaying any doubts that may cross their minds that you will be able to conduct the research.

Notice in the sample applications how the writing keeps reviewers' eyes on the ball by bringing them back to the main points the PIs want to make. Write yourself an insurance policy against human fallibility: if it's a key point, repeat it, then repeat it again.

The Big Three

So as you write, put the big picture squarely in your sights. When reviewers read your application, they'll look for the answers to three basic questions:

• Can your research move your field forward?
• Is the field important—will progress make a difference to human health?
• Can you and your team carry out the work?

Add Emphasis

Savvy PIs create opportunities to drive their main points home. They don't stop at the Significance section to emphasize their project's importance, and they look beyond their biosketches to highlight their team's expertise.

Don't take a chance your reviewer will gloss over that one critical sentence buried somewhere in your Research Strategy or elsewhere. Write yourself an insurance policy against human fallibility: if it's a key point, repeat it, then repeat it again.

Add more emphasis by putting the text in bold, or bold italics (in the modern age, we skip underlining—it's for typewriters).

Here are more strategies from our successful PIs:

• While describing a method in the Approach section, they state their or collaborators' experience with it.
• They point out that they have access to a necessary piece of equipment.
• When explaining their field and the status of current research, they weave in their own work and their preliminary data.
• They delve into the biology of the area to make sure reviewers will grasp the importance of their research and understand their field and how their work fits into it.

You can see many of these principles at work in the Approach section of the Application from Dr. William Faubion , "Inflammatory cascades disrupt Treg function through epigenetic mechanisms."

• Reviewers felt that the experiments described for Aim 1 will yield clear results.
• The plans to translate those findings to gene targets of relevance are well outlined and focused.
• He ties his proposed experiments to the larger picture, including past research and strong preliminary data for the current application. 

Anticipate Reviewer Questions

Our applicants not only wrote with their reviewers in mind they seemed to anticipate their questions. You may think: how can I anticipate all the questions people may have? Of course you can't, but there are some basic items (in addition to the "big three" listed above) that will surely be on your reviewers' minds:

• Will the investigators be able to get the work done within the project period, or is the proposed work over ambitious?
• Did the PI describe potential pitfalls and possible alternatives?
• Will the experiments generate meaningful data?
• Could the resulting data prove the hypothesis?
• Are others already doing the work, or has it been already completed?

Address these questions; then spend time thinking about more potential issues specific to you and your research—and address those too.

For applications, a picture can truly be worth a thousand words. Graphics can illustrate complex information in a small space and add visual interest to your application.

Look at our sample applications to see how the investigators included schematics, tables, illustrations, graphs, and other types of graphics to enhance their applications.

Consider adding a timetable or flowchart to illustrate your experimental plan, including decision trees with alternative experimental pathways to help your reviewers understand your plans.

Plan Ahead for Video

If you plan to send one or more videos, you'll need to meet certain standards and include key information in your Research Strategy now.

To present some concepts or demonstrations, video may enhance your application beyond what graphics alone can achieve. However, you can't count on all reviewers being able to see or hear video, so you'll want to be strategic in how you incorporate it into your application.

Be reviewer-friendly. Help your cause by taking the following steps:

• Caption any narration in the video.
• Choose evocative still images from your video to accompany your summary.
• Write your summary of the video carefully so the text would make sense even without the video.

In addition to those considerations, create your videos to fit NIH’s technical requirements. Learn more in the SF 424 Form Instructions .

Next, as you write your Research Strategy, include key images from the video and a brief description.

Then, state in your cover letter that you plan to send video later. (Don't attach your files to the application.)

After you apply and get assignment information from the Commons, ask your assigned scientific review officer (SRO) how your business official should send the files. Your video files are due at least one month before the peer review meeting.

Know Your Audience's Perspective

The primary audience for your application is your peer review group. Learn how to write for the reviewers who are experts in your field and those who are experts in other fields by reading Know Your Audience .

Be Organized: A B C or 1 2 3?

In the top-notch applications we reviewed, organization ruled but followed few rules. While you want to be organized, how you go about it is up to you.

Nevertheless, here are some principles to follow:

• Start each of the Research Strategy's sections with a header: Significance, Innovation, and Approach—this you must do.

The Research Strategy's page limit—12 for R01s—is for the three main parts: Significance, Innovation, and Approach and your preliminary studies (or a progress report if you're renewing your grant). Other sections, for example, research animals or select agents, do not have a page limit.

Although you will emphasize your project's significance throughout the application, the Significance section should give the most details. Don't skimp—the farther removed your reviewers are from your field, the more information you'll need to provide on basic biology, importance of the area, research opportunities, and new findings.

When you describe your project's significance, put it in the context of 1) the state of your field, 2) your long-term research plans, and 3) your preliminary data.

In our Sample Applications , you can see that both investigators and reviewers made a case for the importance of the research to improving human health as well as to the scientific field.

Look at the Significance section of the Application from Dr. Mengxi Jiang , "Intersection of polyomavirus infection and host cellular responses," to see how these elements combine to make a strong case for significance.

• Dr. Jiang starts with a summary of the field of polyomavirus research, identifying critical knowledge gaps in the field.
• The application ties the lab's previous discoveries and new research plans to filling those gaps, establishing the significance with context.
• Note the use of formatting, whitespace, and sectioning to highlight key points and make it easier for reviewers to read the text.

After conveying the significance of the research in several parts of the application, check that

• In the Significance section, I describe the importance of my hypothesis to the field (especially if my reviewers are not in it) and human disease.
• I also point out the project's significance throughout the application.
• The application shows that I am aware of opportunities, gaps, roadblocks, and research underway in my field.
• I state how my research will advance my field, highlighting knowledge gaps and showing how my project fills one or more of them.
• Based on my scan of the review committee roster, I determine whether I cannot assume my reviewers will know my field and provide some information on basic biology, the importance of the area, knowledge gaps, and new findings.

If you are either a new PI or entering a new area: be cautious about seeming too innovative. Not only is innovation just one of five review criteria, but there might be a paradigm shift in your area of science. A reviewer may take a challenge to the status quo as a challenge to his or her world view.

When you look at our sample applications, you see that both the new and experienced investigators are not generally shifting paradigms. They are using new approaches or models, working in new areas, or testing innovative ideas.

After finishing the draft innovation section, check that

• I show how my proposed research is new and unique, e.g., explores new scientific avenues, has a novel hypothesis, will create new knowledge.
• Most likely, I explain how my project's research can refine, improve, or propose a new application of an existing concept or method.
• Make a very strong case for challenging the existing paradigm.
• Have data to support the innovative approach.
• Have strong evidence that I can do the work.

In your Approach, you spell out a few sets of experiments to address each aim. As we noted above, it's a good idea to restate the key points you've made about your project's significance, its place in your field, and your long-term goals.

You're probably wondering how much detail to include.

If you look at our sample applications as a guide, you can see very different approaches. Though people generally used less detail than you'd see in a scientific paper, they do include some experimental detail.

Expect your assigned reviewers to scrutinize your approach: they will want to know what you plan to do and how you plan to do it.

NIH data show that of the peer review criteria, approach has the highest correlation with the overall impact score.

Look at the Application from Dr. Mengxi Jiang , "Intersection of polyomavirus infection and host cellular responses," to see how a new investigator handled the Approach section.

For an example of an experienced investigator's well-received Approach section, see the Application from Dr. William Faubion , "Inflammatory cascades disrupt Treg function through epigenetic mechanisms."

Especially if you are a new investigator, you need enough detail to convince reviewers that you understand what you are undertaking and can handle the method.

• Cite a publication that shows you can handle the method where you can, but give more details if you and your team don't have a proven record using the method—and state explicitly why you think you will succeed.
• If space is short, you could also focus on experiments that highlight your expertise or are especially interesting. For experiments that are pedestrian or contracted out, just list the method.

Be sure to lay out a plan for alternative experiments and approaches in case you get negative or surprising results. Show reviewers you have a plan for spending the four or five years you will be funded no matter where the experiments lead.

See the Application from Drs. Li and Samulski , "Enhance AAV Liver Transduction with Capsid Immune Evasion," for a strong Approach section covering potential. As an example, see section C.1.3.'s alternative approaches.

Here are some pointers for organizing your Approach:

• Enter a bold header for each Specific Aim.
• Under each aim, describe the first set of experiments.
• If you get result X, you will follow pathway X; if you get result Y, you will follow pathway Y.
• Consider illustrating this with a flowchart.

Trim the fat—omit all information not needed to make your case. If you try to wow reviewers with your knowledge, they'll find flaws and penalize you heavily. Don't give them ammunition by including anything you don't need.

As you design your experiments, keep a running tab of the following essential data on a separate piece of paper:

• Who. A list of people who will help you for your Key Personnel section later.
• What. A list of equipment and supplies for the experiments you plan.
• Time. Notes on how long each step takes. Timing directly affects your budget as well as how many Specific Aims you can realistically achieve.

Jotting this information down will help you Create a Budget and complete other sections later.

After finishing a draft Approach section, check that

• I include enough background and preliminary data to give reviewers the context and significance of my plans.
• They can test the hypothesis (or hypotheses).
• I show alternative experiments and approaches in case I get negative or surprising results.
• My experiments can yield meaningful data to test my hypothesis (or hypotheses).
• As a new investigator, I include enough detail to convince reviewers I understand and can handle a method. I reviewed the sample applications to see how much detail to use.
• If I or my team has experience with a method, I cite it; otherwise I include enough details to convince reviewers we can handle it.
• I describe the results I anticipate and their implications.
• I omit all information not needed to state my case.
• I keep track of and explain who will do what, what they will do, when and where they will do it, how long it will take, and how much money it will cost.
• My timeline shows when I expect to complete my aims.

If you are applying for a new application, include preliminary studies; for a renewal or a revision (a competing supplement to an existing grant), prepare a progress report instead.

Describing Preliminary Studies

Your preliminary studies show that you can handle the methods and interpret results. Here's where you build reviewer confidence that you are headed in the right direction by pursuing research that builds on your accomplishments.

Reviewers use your preliminary studies together with the biosketches to assess the investigator review criterion, which reflects the competence of the research team.

Give alternative interpretations to your data to show reviewers you've thought through problems in-depth and are prepared to meet future challenges. If you don't do this, the reviewers will!

Though you may include other people's publications, focus on your preliminary data or unpublished data from your lab and the labs of your team members as much as you can.

As we noted above, you can put your preliminary data anywhere in the Research Strategy that you feel is appropriate, but just make sure your reviewers will be able to distinguish it. Alternatively, you can create a separate section with its own header.

Including a Progress Report

If you are applying for a renewal or a revision (a competing supplement to an existing grant), prepare a progress report instead of preliminary studies.

Create a header so your program officer can easily find it and include the following information:

• Project period beginning and end dates.
• Summary of the importance of your findings in relation to your Specific Aims.
• Account of published and unpublished results, highlighting your progress toward achieving your Specific Aims.

Note: if you submit a renewal application before the due date of your progress report, you do not need to submit a separate progress report for your grant. However, you will need to submit it, if your renewal is not funded.

After finishing the draft, check that

• I interpret my preliminary results critically.
• There is enough information to show I know what I'm talking about.
• If my project is complex, I give more preliminary studies.
• I show how my previous experience prepared me for the new project.
• It's clear which data are mine and which are not.

References show your breadth of knowledge of the field. If you leave out an important work, reviewers may assume you're not aware of it.

Throughout your application, you will reference all relevant publications for the concepts underlying your research and your methods.

Read more about your Bibliography and References Cited at Add a Bibliography and Appendix .

• Throughout my application I cite the literature thoroughly but not excessively, adding citations for all references important to my work.
• I cite all papers important to my field, including those from potential reviewers.
• I include fewer than 100 citations (if possible).
• My Bibliography and References Cited form lists all my references.
• I refer to unpublished work, including information I learned through personal contacts.
• If I do not describe a method, I add a reference to the literature.

Look over what you've written with a critical eye of a reviewer to identify potential questions or weak spots.

Enlist others to do that too—they can look at your application with a fresh eye. Include people who aren't familiar with your research to make sure you can get your point across to someone outside your field.

As you finalize the details of your Research Strategy, you will also need to return to your Specific Aims to see if you must revise. See Draft Specific Aims .

After you finish your Research Plan, you are ready to write your Abstract (called Project Summary/Abstract) and Project Narrative, which are attachments to the Other Project Information form.

These sections may be small, but they're important.

• All your peer reviewers read your Abstract and narrative.
• Staff and automated systems in NIH's Center for Scientific Review use them to decide where to assign your application, even if you requested an institute and study section.
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Research plan for a first-time faculty application

I'm in my 3rd year of postdocs and started to apply for Lecturer positions in Computer Science the UK (the entry level permanent faculty positions). As part of my interview process, I am required to give a 15 minute presentation about my current research and my three year research plan, and am looking for some advice on how to do the latter. The focus of the research plan presentation is not only on the ideas you propose, but in major part about how you plan to obtain funding for it and how many research staff you can bring in from that funding to support your research.

I've looked through some other questions regarding UK faculty applications , research plan writing and content , which offer some good advice. However, I am looking for advice specifically targeting early-career researchers applying for their first faculty position .

The two specific aspects I am concerned about is the transition from postdoctoral positions where shorter-term career plans are the norm, as well as my relative inexperience with grant writing (I've recently been included in the late stages of grant writing by my advisor, but that's it).

Of course I am not planning to take the answers I get here my only source of information; I have an advisor happy to discuss this with me and give me specific tips, and have been looking up information about funding for new faculty members online as well as through chatting with fresh hires in my department (with some hinting they rely on the informal support and sharing of more junior research staff from within their team while applying for initial external funding).

So, considering that I've never held a faculty position, have limited experience with grant applications (but an understanding that it is an acquired skill as well as very competitive and thus uncertain), never independently proposed a research project (tho I am always active in proposing and typically independent in choosing which approaches I want to apply to problems), and never formally worked with a PhD or a postdoctoral researcher for full the duration of a project, the questions I have are:

How "confidently" am I supposed to write the research plan? Should I write it assuming I will have a student / research postdoc available to work with, or should I also present a plan for the situation where I do not have "my own staff" for a while?

One major consideration is that UK faculty typically has about 40% of their time dedicated to research (rest is teaching and admin), as opposed to research staff (PhD students and postdocs) with 90+% of their time dedicated to research. Therefore the amount of research that one realistically can conduct would depend substantially on how much funding one manages to secure.

How many backup grant options do I need to include? I understand there is some grant options specifically targeting fresh faculty in the UK, so should I demonstrate that I plan to ask the appropriate parties for funding, or also try to cover the case of no applications being successful?

To summarize: I am concerned and would like advice about the level of confidence in the tone of a 3-year research plan for a fresh faculty member.

I worry that, on the one hand, including many backup options could be seen as "setting myself up to fail", while, on the other hand, too confident a tone would make me come across as somebody not understanding the competitiveness and difficulties in obtaining funding due to my lack of experience.

The level of detail is clear from the format: it's a 15 minute presentation with some time for questions, so I won't have time to talk in much detail, but I might be asked to elaborate on any aspect of it. All in all, I am a fair deal nervous, and I'm not even sure I'm asking the right questions here; any advice from the perspective of applying for a first-time faculty position would be great.

• research-process
• computer-science
• faculty-application
• united-kingdom

2 Answers 2

I see from comments that the interview is past, but here's still some thoughts on this that might be useful for someone else.

I would say that your results at a 3-years horizon don't depend that much on funding prospects, mainly because you're not starting with those funds from day 1, and as a new lecturer you're certainly not expected to have an army of postdocs working for you in the first couple of years.

You might spend a few months writing the grant proposal, then the process will take some more months, and then from decision to start date there's more time... so assuming success you might be able to hire someone to start in a year at best, more realistically two. Then would you start immediately with postdocs? Unless you're one of several investigators in a larger project, that doesn't sound realistic. Rather you'll probably be supervising MSc projects, and you might hope for one or two PhD students to start within those three years, and with any luck get their first paper or two. I think what you need to pitch is a set of ideas that could form a grant proposal and some realistic-sounding MSc and PhD topics.

The bottom line is that you're being asked for a 3-year plan to see whether you can actually prepare a plan that involves medium- to long-term goals, rather than just think of the next development of what you're doing at the moment.

My situation was a bit different as I went directly from my mathematics PhD to a faculty position (in the US). But when I finished the doctorate I had a file drawer full of speculative ideas and ideas left unexplored from the work on the dissertation. If you have such a thing, or could create it, you should 'mine' it for ideas that are yet to be explored. These should be easy for you to discuss since you already touched on them in your past, though if you haven't already recorded them you have some work to do. For such work you can probably speak with confidence.

Fifteen minutes isn't very long, so you don't need a lot of material. But you might think about the fact that since you will also be teaching, research that students could potentially participate in could be especially valued. Also, you have likely gained insight into a wide range of ideas that are at least peripherally related to your current research. That wide range opens doors to a moderately broad "area" of research that increases your likelihood of success in exploring at least some of the ideas. While research is necessarily narrow for a given idea, there are related areas, most likely, that increase your range and hence your desirability as a colleague.

Sorry that I can't speak much about UK funding, but in general, "interesting" ideas are also interesting to funders. Likewise, appearing to a funder as someone with a lot of ideas (and therefore potential) is also an advantage.

• Thank you for your answer. My interview was a week ago at this point, so waiting for the response atm. The "idea drawer" sounds very interesting, and something I will try to implement from now on. However, the focus of the (research) presentation in the UK is in a big part on obtaining funding so your answer covers just half of my question. I was more interested in how to go about presenting the uncertainty with funding applications - about half of what I said regarding each research proposal was about the idea itself, the rest was about getting it funded and making (industrial, social) impact –  penelope Commented Nov 7, 2018 at 13:59
• Also, just for extra context, while the main part of the interview follows and is with the same panel as the presentation of the research plan, there is in fact a separate teaching presentation before of a different panel. Since the bulk of the interview follows the research plan presentation, they were also asking some questions about teaching, but that aspect is mostly covered in front of a different panel. –  penelope Commented Nov 7, 2018 at 14:05
• I think, when I wrote the question, I was interested mostly in how funded I should assume I will be during the time I am presenting the research plan for. You only get about 40% of your time allocated to research as faculty in the UK. So, the actual goal of the presentation was to say stuff like: "for research idea A, I will aim to fund it from the agency B, which will allow me to hire a postdoctoral researcher for X years to work on A". Consequently, the research plan takes a much different shape depending on how much funding you (assume) you are going to obtain. –  penelope Commented Nov 7, 2018 at 14:25
• Also, I might be wrong on this, but the only way to appear to a funder as "prolific" is by your past profile in the terms of what you published, and which projects you got funded. Since PI grants are usually given for a specific project with concrete goals, I was advised that including too many ideas in your research proposal for a grant application will make your application weaker, as it appears you have no clear idea of what to do and and/or have not clearly defined your project goals. –  penelope Commented Nov 7, 2018 at 14:28

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Developing a Five-Year Research Plan

Cathy binger and lizbeth finestack, doi: 10.1044/cred-pvd-path006.

The following is a transcript of the presentation videos, edited for clarity.

What Is a Research Plan, and Why Do You Need One?

Presented by Cathy Binger

First we’re going to talk about what a research plan is, why it’s important to write one, and why five years—why not one year, why not ten years. So we’ll do some of those basic things, then Liza is going to get down and dirty into the nitty-gritty of “now what” how do I go about writing that research plan.

First of all, what is a research plan? I’m sure some of you have taken a stab at these already. In case you haven’t, this is a real personalized map that relates your projects to goals. It’s exactly what it sounds like, it’s a plan of how you’re going to go about doing your research. It doesn’t necessarily just include research.

It’s something that you need to put a little time and effort into in the beginning. And then, if you don’t revisit it, it’s really a useless document. It’s something that you need to come back to repeatedly, at least annually, and you need to make it visible. So it’s not a document that sits around and once a year you pull it out and look at it.

It can and should be designed, especially initially, with the help of a mentor or colleague. And it does serve multiple purposes, with different lengths and different amounts of detail.

I forgot to say, too, getting started, the slides for this talk were started using as a jumping off point Ray Kent’s talk from last year. So some of the slides we’ve borrowed from him, so many thanks to him for that.

But why do we want to do a research plan? Well, to me the big thing is the vision. Dr. Barlow talked this morning about your line of research and really knowing where you want to go, and this is where that shows up with all the nuts and bolts in place.

What do you want to accomplish? What do you want to contribute? Most of you are at the stage in your career where maybe you have started out with that you want to change the world scenario and realized that whatever you wanted your first research project to be, really, is your entire career. You need to get that down to the point where it is manageable projects that you can do—this is where you map out what those projects are and set reasonable timelines for that.

You want to really demonstrate your independent thinking and your own creativity, whatever that is that you then establish as a PhD student, postdoc, and beyond—this is where you come back to, okay, here’s how I’m going to go about achieving all of that.

This next point, learning to realistically gauge how long it takes to achieve each goal, this for most of us is a phenomenally challenging thing to do. Most of us really overestimate what we can do in a certain amount of time, and we learn the hard way that you can’t, and that’s another reason why you keep coming back to these plans repeatedly and learning over time what’s really manageable, what’s really doable, so we can still reach our goals and be very strategic about how we do that.

When you’re not strategic, you just don’t meet the goals. Your time gets sucked into so many different things. We need to be really practical and strategic.

Everything we do is going to take longer than we think.

I think this last one is something that maybe we don’t talk about enough. Really being honest with ourselves about the role of research in our lives. Not all of you are at very high-level research universities. Some of you have chosen to go elsewhere, where research maybe isn’t going to be playing the same role as it is for other people. The research plan for someone at an R One research intensive university is going to look quite different from someone who is at a primary teaching university. We need to be open and practical about that.

Getting sidetracked. I love this picture, I just found this picture the other day. This feels like my life. You can get pulled in so many different directions once you are a professor. You will get asked to do a thousand different things. There are lots of great opportunities that are out there. Especially initially, it’s tempting to say yes to all of them. But if you’re going to be productive, you have to be very strategic. I’m going to be a little bit sexist against my own sex here for a minute, but my observation has been that women tend to fall into this a little bit more than men do in wanting to say yes and be people pleasers for everything that comes down the pike.

It is a professional skill to learn how to say no. And to do that in such a way that you are not burning bridges as you go down the path. That is a critical skill if you are going to be a successful researcher. I can’t tell you how many countless people I’ve seen who are very bright, very dedicated, have the skills that it takes in terms of doing the work—but then they are not successful because they’ve gotten sidetracked and they try to be too much of a good citizen, give too much service to the department, too much “sure I’ll take on that extra class” or whatever else comes down the line.

I just spoke with a professor recently who had something like five hours a week of office hours scheduled every single week for one class. Margaret is shaking her head like “are you kidding?” That’s crazy stuff. But he wanted to really support his students. His students loved him, but he was not going to get tenure. That’s the story.

So we have to be very thoughtful and strategic, and what can help you with this, and ASHA very firmly recognizes which is why we’re here—is that your mentors in your life should be there to help you learn these skills and learn what to say yes to, and learn what to say no to. I’ve learned to say things like, “Let me check with my mentor before I agree to that.” And it gives you a way out of that. The line that I use a lot is, “Let me check with my department head” or, I just said this to somebody last week, “I just promised my department head two weeks ago that I would only do X number of external workshops this year, so I’m going to have to turn this one down.” Those are really important skills to develop.

And having that research plan in place that you can go back to and say, know what, it’s not on my plan I can’t do it. If I do it—I have to go back to my research plan and figure out what I’m going to kick off in order to review this extra paper, in order to take on this extra task. The plan also helps me to know exactly what to say no to. And to be very direct and have a very strong visual.

I actually have my research plan up on a giant whiteboard in my office, so I can always go back to that and see where I am, and I can say, “Okay, what am I going to kick off of here? Nothing. Okay, I have to say no to whatever comes up.” Just be strategic. This is where I see most beginning professors really end up taking that wrong fork in the road—taking that right instead of that left, and ending up not being the successful researcher that they wanted to be.

What evidence supports research planning? This was something Ray Kent had found. That a recent analysis had found that postdoc scholars who developed a written plan with their postdoc advisers were much more productive than those who didn’t. And your performance during a postdoc—and I know many of you have either finished your postdoc or decided not to—so more simply, just during those first six years, the decisions you make really do establish the foundation for the rest of your professional life. It’s very important to get started and get off on the right foot.

I love this quote, I just found it the other day: “Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning, and focused effort.”

What we see with productivity is that postdoc scholars who developed written productivity expectations with their advisers were more productive than those who didn’t. You see 23% more papers submitted, 30% more first-author papers, and more grant proposals as well.

So why five years? I’m going to start with number 5. It’s long enough to build a program of research, but short enough to deal with changing circumstances. That’s really the long and the short of the matter. As well as these other things as well that I won’t take the time to go through point by point.

What Should a Five-Year Plan Include?

Presented by Lizbeth Finestack

So, thinking about a five-year research plan, I like to think about it like your major “To Do List.” It’s what you’re going to accomplish in five years. Start thinking: What is going to be on my to do list?

You can also think about it like: Okay, I have research. I’ve got to do research. Maybe think about this as one big bucket, or maybe one humongous silo. I have some farm themes going on. Cathy was just on a farm, so I thought I’d tie that in.

So here’s your big silo. You can call that your research silo.

But more realistically, you need to think about it like separate buckets, separate silos, where research is just one of those. Just like Cathy indicated, there’s going to be lots of other things coming up that you’re going to have to manage. They are going to have to be on your to do list, you need to figure out how to fit everything in.

What all those other buckets or silos are, are really going to depend on your job. And maybe the size of the silos, and the size of the buckets are going to vary depending on where you are, what the expectations are at your institution.

That’s important to keep in mind, and Cathy said this too, it’s not going to be the same for everyone. The five-year plan has to be your plan, your to do list.

Here are some buckets or some silos that I have on my list and the way that I break it up, this is just one example, take it or leave it.

The first three are all very closely related, right? Thinking about grants, thinking about research, thinking about publications. I’m going to define grants as actual writing, getting the grant, getting the money.

Research is what you’re going to do once you get that money. Steps you need to take before you are getting the money. Any sorts of projects, the lab work, that’s why I have the lab picture there. Of course, publications are part of the product—what’s coming out of the research—but it also cycles in because you need publications to support that you are a researcher to apply for funding and show you have this line of research that you’ve established and you’ll be able to continue. So, those first three are really closely related. And that’s where I’ll go next. And then have teaching and service you see here at the bottom.

So thinking about research, in that broad sense. As you’re writing your five-year plan you’re going to want to think of, “What’s my long-term goal?” There’s lots of ways to think of long-term goals. You could think, before I die, this is what I want to accomplish. For me I kind of have that. My long-term goal is that I’m going to find the most effective and efficient interventions for kids with language impairment. Huge broad goal. But within that I can start narrowing it down.

Where am I within that? Within the next five years or maybe the next ten years, what is it I want to accomplish towards that goal. Then start thinking about: In order to accomplish that goal, what are the steps I need to take? Starting to break it down a little bit. Then it’s also going to be really important to think: where are you going to start? Where are you now? What do you need to have happen? And is it reasonable to accomplish this goal within five years? Is it going to take longer? Maybe you could do it in a couple years? Start thinking about the timeline that’s going to work for you.

Then thinking about your goals—and everyone’s program is going to be different, like I said, there’s going to be a lot of individual needs, preferences. So it might be the case that you have this one long-term goal that you’re aiming for. Long-term goal in the sense of, maybe, what you want to study in your R01, perhaps something like that. But in order to get to that point, you’re going to have several short-term goals that need to be accomplished.

Or maybe it’s the case that you have two long-term goals. And with each of those you’re going to have multiple short-term goals that you’re working on. Maybe the scope of each of these long-term goals is a little bit less than in that first scenario.

Start thinking about my research, what I want to do, and how it might fit into these different circumstances.

Also thinking about your goals, this is a slide from Ray Kent from last year, was thinking about the different types of projects you might want to pursue, and thinking about ones that are definitely well on your way. They are safe bets. You have some funding. They are going to lead directly into your longer-term plan.

Those are going to be your front burner—things you can easily focus on. That said, don’t put everything there.

You can also have things on the back burner. Things that really excite you, might have huge benefits, big pay. But you don’t want to spend all of your time there because they could be pretty risky.

Start thinking about where you’re putting your time. Are you putting it all on this high-risk thing that if it doesn’t pan out you’re going to be in big trouble? Or balancing that somewhat with your front burner. Making that steady progress that will lead directly to help fund an R01 or whatever the mechanism that you’re looking for.

Then, thinking about your goals—if you have multiple long-term goals, or thinking about your short-term goals, you could think about your process. Is it something where you need to do study 1 then study 2, then study 3—each of those building on each other, that’s leading to that long-term goal. In many cases, that is the case, where you have to get information from the first study which is going to lead directly to the second study and so forth.

Or is it the case that you can be working on these three short-term goals simultaneously? Spreading your resources at the same time. Maybe it will take longer for any one study, but across a longer period of time you’ll get the information that you need to reach that long-term goal.

Lots and lots of different ways to go about it. The important thing is to think about what your needs are and what makes the most sense for you.

Here’s my own little personal example. Starting over here, I have my dissertation study. My dissertation study was this early efficacy study looking at one treatment approach using novel forms that really can’t generalize to anything too useful, but it was important.

Then I did a follow up study, where I was taking that same paradigm, looking to see where kids with typical development perform on the task. So I have these two studies, and they served as my preliminary studies for an R03. So I just finished an R03 where I was looking at different treatment approaching for kids with primary language impairment. At the same time, while conducting my R03, I’m also looking at some different approaches that might help with language development. Also conducting surveys to see what current practices are.

I have these three projects going on simultaneously, that are going to lead to a bigger pilot study that are going to feed directly into my R01. All of this will serve as preliminary data to go into an R01.

Start thinking about your projects, what you have. Maybe starting with your dissertation project or work that you’re doing as a postdoc as seeing how that can feed into your long-term goal. And really utilizing it, building on it, to your benefit.

That’s all fine and dandy. You can draw these great pictures. But you still have to break it down some more. It’s not like, “Oh, I’m just going to do this project.” There are other steps involved, and lots of the time these steps are going to be just as time consuming.

Starting to think about: well, if you have the funding. Saying, “I want to do this study, but I have no money to do it.” What are the steps in order to get the money to do it? Do you have a pilot study? What do you need?

Start thinking about the resources? Do you need to develop stimuli, protocols, procedures? Start working on that. All of these can be very time consuming, and if you don’t jump on that immediately, it’s going to delay when you can start that project.

Thinking about IRB. Relationships for recruitment, if you’re working with special populations especially? Do you have necessary personnel, grad students, people to help you with the project? Do you need to train them? What’s the timeline of the study?

Start thinking about all these pieces, and how they are going to fit in that timeline.

This is one way that might help you start thinking about the resources that you need. This is online—Ray Kent had it in his talk, and when I was doing my searches I came across it too and I have the website at the end. Just different ways to think about the resources you might need.

Let’s talk about mapping it out. You have your long-term goal. You have your short-term goals. You’re breaking it down thinking about all those little steps that you need to accomplish. We gotta put it on a calendar. When is it going to happen?

This is an example—you might have your five years. Each month plugging in what are you going to accomplish by that time. Maybe it’s when are grant applications due? It’s going to be important to put those on there to go what do I need to do to make that deadline. Maybe it’s putting when you’re going to get publications out. Things like that.

Honestly, looking at this drives me a little bit crazy, it seems a bit overwhelming. But it’s important to get to these details.

This is an example from, I did Lessons for Success a few years ago and they had their format for doing your plan. I wrote out all my projects, started thinking about all the different aspects. So if something like this works for you, by all means you could use that type of procedure.

Here’s a grid that Ray Kent showed last year. We’re breaking it down by semester. Thinking about each of your semesters, what manuscripts you’re going to be working on, what data collection, your grant applications. Starting to get into some of those other buckets: course preparation, conference submissions.

We also need to include teaching and service.

You probably can’t see this very well. This is similar to that last slide Ray Kent had used last year.

I have my five year plan: what studies I want to accomplish, start thinking about breaking it down.

Then at the beginning of each semester, I fill in a grid like this. Where at the top, I have each of my buckets. I have my grant bucket, my writing bucket which is going to include publications. I also include doing article reviews in my writing bucket, because that’s my writing time. My teaching bucket, my research bucket. Then at the end, my service bucket.

At the beginning of the semester, I think about the big things I want to accomplish. I list those at the top. Then at the beginning of each month, I say, okay what are the things I’m going to accomplish this month, write those in. Then at the beginning of each week, I start looking at whether I’m dedicating any time to the things I said I was going to do that month. I start listing those out saying, this is the amount of time I’m going to spend on that. Of course, I have to take data on what I actually do, so I plug in how much time I’m spending on each of the tasks. Then I graph it, because that’s rewarding to see how much time you’re spending on things, and I get a little side-tracked sometimes.

Think about a system that will help you keep on track, to make sure you’re meeting the goals that you want to meet in terms of your research. But also getting the other things done that you need to get done in terms of teaching and service.

Discussion and Questions

Compiled from comments made during the Pathways 2014 and 2015 conferences. (Video unavailable.)

Building Flexibility into Your Five-Year Plan Comments by Ray Kent, University of Wisconsin-Madison

The five-year plan is not a contract. It’s a map or a compass. A general set of directions to help you plan ahead. It’s not even a contract with yourself, because it will inevitably be revised in some ways.

Sometimes cool things land in your lap. Very often it turns out that through serendipity or whatever else, you find opportunities that are very enticing. Some of those can be path to an entirely new line of research. Some of them can be a huge distraction and a waste of time. It’s a really cool part of science that new things come along. If we put on blinders and say, “I’m committed to my research plan,” and we don’t look to the left or the right, we’re really robbing ourselves of much of the richness of the scientific life. Science is full of surprises, and sometimes those surprises are going to appear as research projects. The problem is you don’t want to redirect all your time and resources to those until you’re really sure they are going to pay off. I personally believe, some of those high risk but really appealing projects are things you can nurse along. You can devote some time and build some collaborations – far enough to determine how realistic and viable they are. That’s important because those things can be the core of your next research program.

It’s very easy to get overcommitted. We all know people who always say “yes”—and we know those people, and they are often disappointing because they can’t get things done. It’s important to have new directions, but limit them. Don’t say, “I’m going to have 12 new directions this year.” Maybe one or two. Weigh them carefully. Talk about them with other people to get a judgment about how difficult it might be to implement them. It enriches science: not only our knowledge, but the way we acquire new knowledge. A psychologist, George Miller—this is the guy with the magic number 7 +- 2—when we interviewed him years ago at Boystown, he said, “My conviction is that everybody should be able to learn a new area of study within three months.” That’s what he thought for a scientist was a goal.

The idea is that you can learn new things. And that’s very important because when you think of it in terms of a 30-year career, how likely is it that the project that you’re undertaking at age 28 is the same project you’ll be working on at age 68? Not very likely. You’re going to be reinventing yourself as a scientist. And reinventing yourself is one of the most important things you can do, because otherwise you’re going to be dead wood. Some projects aren’t worth carrying beyond five or ten years. They have an expiration date.

Building Risk into Your Five-Year Plan Comments by Ray Kent, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Your doctoral study should generally be low-risk research. As you move into a postdoctoral fellowship, think about having two studies—one low-risk, one high-risk with a potential for high impact. At this time you can begin to play the risk factor a little bit differently.

When you are tenure-track you can have a mix of significance with low-risk and high-risk studies. And when you are tenured, then you can go for high risk, clinical trials, and collaborations. Because you have established your independence, so you do not need to worry about losing your visibility. You can be recognized as a legitimate member of the team.

As you plan your career, you should take risk into account. Just as you manage your money taking risk into account, we should manage our careers taking risk into account. I have met people who did not really think about that, and they embarked on some very risky procedures and wasted a lot of time and resources with very little to show for it. For example, don’t put everything into an untested technology basket. You want to be using state of the art technology, but you want to be sure it is going to give you what you need.

Other Formats and Uses of Your Research Plan Audience Comments

• If you do your job right with your job talk, there’s a lot of cross-pollination between your job talk and your research plan. Ideally your job talk tells your colleagues that this is the long-term plan that you have. And they shouldn’t be surprised when you submit a more detailed research plan. They should say, “okay this is very consistent with the job talk.” In my view, the job talk should be a crystal summary of the major aspects of that research program. Of course, much of the talk will be about a specific project or two—but it should always be embedded within the larger program. That helps the audience keep sight of the fact that you are looking at the program. You can say that this is one project that I’ve done, and I plan to do more of these, and this is how they are conceptually related. That’s a good example of why the research plan has multiple purposes – it can be a research statement, it can be the core of your job talk, it can be the nature of your elevator message, and it can be a version of your research plan for a K award application or R01 application or anything else of that nature.
• I think what’s useful is to actually draft your NIH biosketch. The new biosketch has a section called “contributions to science.” It’s really helpful to think about all your projects. It’s hard to start with a blank sheet of paper. But to have it in the format of a biosketch can be really helpful.

Avoiding Overcommitment Audience Comments

• One of the things that is amazing about planning is that if you put an estimate on the level of effort for each part of your plan, you’ll quickly find that you are living three or four lives. Some 300% of your time is spent. It’s helpful for those of us who might share my lack of ability to see constraints or limitations to reel it back and say, “I have a lot on my plate.” Which allows you to say no—which is not something we all do very well when it comes to those nice colleagues and those people you want to impress nationally and connect with. But it allows you to look at what’s planned and go, “I don’t know where I’d find the time to do that.” Which will hopefully help you stay on track.
• I keep a to do list, but I also keep a “to not do” list. One of the things I will keep on my plan is the maximum number of papers I will review in a year. If I hit that number in March, that’s it. I say no to every other paper that comes down the pike. That’s something to work out with your mentor as far as what’s realistic and what’s okay for you. Every time I get a request, I think, “That’s my reading and writing time, so what am I willing to give up. If it means I won’t be able to write on my own paper this week, am I willing to do this?”

Staying on Schedule with Reading, Writing, and Reviewing Audience Comments

• You have to do what works for you. Some people do wait for big blocks of time for writing—which are hard to come by. But the most important thing is to block off your time. Put it on your schedule, or it is the first thing that will get pushed aside.
• Another thing I’ve done with some of my colleagues is writing retreats. So maybe once a year, twice a year, we’ll get together. Usually we’ll go to a hotel or somewhere, and we’re just writing. It’s a great way to get a jumpstart on a project. Like, I need to sit down and start this manuscript, and you can keep going once you’ve got that momentum.
• My input would be that you really have to write all the time, every day. It’s a skill. I’ve found that if I take time off, my writing deteriorates. It’s something you need to keep up with.
• I would look at it like a savings account that you put money into on a daily, weekly, monthly basis. The flip side of writing is reading. I would read constantly, widely, and not just in the discipline. That will give you not only a breadth in terms of your understanding of your field and the world around you, but it will also give you an incentive to make your own contributions. I think we don’t talk enough about the comprehensive side to this, and being receptive to the reading. I have a book, or something, by my bedside every night. And I read that until I fall asleep every night. And it’s done me in good stead over the years.
• Reviewing articles can help advance your career, but it is something you need to weigh carefully as a draw on your time. You get a lot from it. You get to see what’s out there. You get to see what’s coming down the pipe before publication. To me that’s a huge benefit. You get to learn from other people’s writing, and that’s part of your reading you get to do. But it is time consuming. And it depends on the kinds of papers you get. Sometimes you’re lucky and sometimes you’re not.
• If someone else is reviewing your grants and your articles, at some point you owe it back. You should at least be in break-even mode. Now, pre-tenure or postdoc your mentor should be doing that or senior faculty in the department. But there are so many articles to review. I review so many articles, but I am also at the tail end of my career. The bottom line is, if you don’t put on your schedule that if you don’t put time on your schedule for reading, reviewing articles forces you to look at and think about the literature, so you can be accomplishing what you owe back to the field—and at the same time, staying one step ahead knowledge wise. It forces you to do what you should be doing all along, which is keeping up with the literature.

Further Reading: Web Resources

Golash-Boza, T. (2014). In Response to Popular Demand, More on the 5-Year Plan. The Professor Is In . Available at http://theprofessorisin.com/2014/05/09/in-response-to-popular-demand-more-on-the-5-year-plan

Kelsky, K. (2010). The Five-Year Plan for Tenure-Track Professors. Get a life, PhD . Available at http://getalifephd.blogspot.com/2010/07/five-year-plan-for-tenure-track.html

National Association of Geoscience Teachers (NAGT). (2012). Planning Worksheets . Planning your Research Program (Available from the Science Education Resource Center at Carelton College Website at http://serc.carleton.edu/).

Pfirman, S., Bell, R., Culligan, P., Balsam, P. & Laird, J. (2008) . Maximizing Productivity and Recognition , Part 3: Developing a Research Plan. Science Careers. Available at http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_magazine/previous_issues/articles/2008_10_10/caredit.a0800148

Cathy Binger University of New Mexico

Lizbeth Finestack University of Minnesota

Based on a presentation and slides originally developed by Ray Kent, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Presented at Pathways (2015). Hosted by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association Research Mentoring Network.

Pathways is sponsored by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) through a U24 grant awarded to ASHA.

Copyrighted Material. Reproduced by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association in the Clinical Research Education Library with permission from the author or presenter.

Community Action and Analysis Plan: Guidance and Resources for Community Care Hubs to Address Health-Related Social Needs Based on Lessons from North Carolina

Project Report

Published date

Executive Summary

Addressing unmet health-related social needs (HRSNs) is critical to improving health outcomes and requires well-coordinated systems of health and social care. Community Care Hubs (CCHs) – community-centered backbone organizations that coordinate care between the health and social sectors – play a critical role in developing these coordinated systems of care. CCHs are designed to organize, support, and provide centralized infrastructure for community-based organizations (CBOs) and other service providers that are participating in cross-sectoral partnerships.

CCHs serve a critical role in their communities, but the scope and capacity of CCHs can vary. Given this, there is a need for additional guidance and support to start, scale, and sustain the work of CCHs. The purpose of this Community Action and Analysis Plan is to highlight practical steps that future and current CCHs can take to start, scale, and sustain efforts to address HRSNs. From our research, we identified six major competency areas for CCHs. Below is a high-level summary of the main steps that CCHs can take across the six competencies outlined in this document. This is meant to serve as both a self-assessment tool and a guide through the document’s main points. Within each section, we describe examples of data, resources, and partnerships that can support these efforts, including both foundational skills and advanced steps. Readers can choose to review and focus on topics that are of particular interest and are directed to external sources to read more when such external resources exist.

Read the full text here .

Duke-Margolis Authors

Katie Huber, MPH

Policy Research Associate

Brianna Van Stekelenburg, MPP

Research Associate

Veronica Marshall-Kirk

2024 Margolis Intern

Rebecca Whitaker, PhD, MSPH

Research Director, North Carolina Health Care Transformation Core Faculty Member Senior Team Member Anti-Racism and Equity Committee Member

Robert Saunders, PhD

Senior Research Director, Health Care Transformation Adjunct Associate Professor Executive Team Member Margolis Core Faculty

William K. Bleser, PhD, MSPH

Research Director, Health Care Transformation for Social Needs and Health Equity Senior Team Member Anti-Racism and Equity Committee Member

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• Open access
• Published: 28 August 2024

International aid management in Afghanistan’s health sector from the perspective of national and international managers

• Noorullah Rashed 1 , 2 ,
• Hamidreza Shabanikiya 1 , 4 ,
• Leili Alizamani 1 ,
• Jamshid Jamali 3 &
• Fatemeh Kokabisaghi 1 , 4  

BMC Health Services Research volume  24 , Article number:  1001 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

Metrics details

The primary purpose of international aid is to promote economic and social development around the world. International aid plays an important role in Afghanistan’s healthcare system. The purpose of this study is to investigate international aid management in Afghanistan’s health sector from the perspectives of national and international managers in 2022 and to provide recommendations for the improvement.

Design/methodology/approach

The study has a cross-sectional design. The study participants were chosen by random sampling. The sample size was determined based on Yaman’s formula at 110. The data collection tool was the questionnaire provided by International Health Partnership and Related Initiatives. The data were analyzed in two descriptive (mean and percentage) and analytical formats. Independent t-test, Mann-Whitney, Kolmogorov-Smirnov tests and Variance analysis were used to examine the relationships between demographic variables and the scores of each dimension.

The average scores given to different dimensions of aid management were as following: 1) the donners’ support of the national health strategy: 48/68 ± 16.14 (49%), 2) the predictable financing: 50/23 ± 16.02 (50%), 3) foreign aid on budget: 55/39 ± 20.15 (55%), 4) strengthening public financial management system: 38/35 ± 19.06 (38%), 5) strengthening the supply and procurement system: 40.97 ± 19.55 (41%), 6) mutual accountability: 46.50 ± 19.26 (46%), 7) technical support and training: 50.24 ± 17.33 (50%), 8) civil society involvement: 35.24 ± 18.61(35%), 9) private sector participation: 36 ± 17.55 (36%), and in total the average score was 44.52 ± 13.27 (44%). The difference between the scores given by two groups of managers was not significant. No meaningful relationship was observed between the total score and any of the demographic variables, but there was a weak relationship between work and management experience and total score. The correlation coefficient showed a statistically significant relationship between the different dimensions of the questionnaire. To sum up, the performance in all dimensions of aid management hardly reached 50%. Donors’ support for the national health strategy was not adequate. There were challenges in evidence-based decision-making, developing national health strategies, control and evaluation, the allocation of resources and use of procurement system. The priorities of donors and government were not always similar and mutual responsibility was lacking. Technical assistance and supporting multilateral cooperation are necessary.

Originality/value

Most studies on foreign aid focused on its effects on economic growth, poverty and investment and not aid management processes. Without proper aid management, parts of resources are wasted and aims of aid programs cannot be achieved. This study investigates aid management in a developing country from the perspectives of two main stakeholders, international and national managers.

Research limitations and implications

Data collection coincided with the change of government in Afghanistan. The situation might be different now. Still, this study provides areas for the improvement of aid management in the studied country. Future studies can build upon the findings of this research and conduct in-depth exploration of areas of aid effectiveness and designing detailed programs of improvement.

Practical implications

Instructions of the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness need to be followed. Particularly, civil society involvement and private sector participation should receive attention. A joint plan for improvement and collaboration of different stakeholders is needed.

Peer Review reports

Introduction

Afghanistan’s history is characterized by internal conflicts and wars which destroyed the economy and country’s infrastructures, including the healthcare system [ 1 ]. Afghanistan is highly dependent on international aid. Dependence on international aid is defined when the aid accounts for at least 10% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and in the absence of this aid, the government cannot perform its main functions [ 2 ]. In 2018, the World Bank estimated that international aid constitutes nearly 40% of Afghanistan’s GDP [ 3 ].

Foreign aid has been effective in improving Afghans’ access to education and health services but still 43% of Afghans do not have access to primary health services and 55% live below the poverty line [ 4 ]. The health financing system in this country is fragile due to high out-of-pocket payment and reliance on donors [ 5 ]. The country’s health sector is financed by 72% out-of-pocket payments, 19.4% donations, 5.1% government budget and 3.5 other sources [ 6 ]. Lack of cooperation between the government and donors on how to spend the aid, political instability, low domestic production and investment, drug mafia, and illiteracy decreased the effectiveness of aid in Afghanistan [ 7 ]. The health of Afghans has improved over the past decade; however, because of poor management of health system, corruption, low quality of health services, lack of monitoring and control, the absence of a comprehensive national policy on universal health services coverage and incomplete implementation of development programs, Afghanistan has the lowest health indicators among the countries in the region [ 4 ].

In recent years, a large amount of aid has been delivered to Afghanistan. There are limited studies addressing aid management and effectiveness in this country. Studies mostly focused on the impact of aid particularly economic effects. Better processes and structures prevent waste of resources that can be used for other priorities. Since international aid plays an important and fundamental role in Afghanistan’s healthcare system, and this system is dependent on it, the way international aid is managed is of great and undeniable importance. The current study examined international aid management in the health sector of Afghanistan from the perspectives of health system managers and donors. It provides areas that require attention of policy makers to increase effectiveness.

Literature review

The main purpose of foreign aid is to reduce poverty and increase economic growth and development in recipient countries [ 8 ]. Official development assistance has increased steadily over the past years. Economic growth is a determinant of social development. Studies showed that public expenditure on health and education, and proper income distribution contributed to human development. Study by Gomanee et al. showed effects of international aid on alleviating poverty and infant mortality [ 9 ].

This is difficult to determine the real impact of foreign aid because development is a multi-dimensional issue that can be influenced by multiple stakeholders. Moreover, the methodology and scope of the assessment can bring different results. Foreign aid effectiveness has been questioned in empirical studies [ 10 ]. In some cases, foreign aid has been remarkably effective. However, there are examples of aid failure [ 11 ]. A study in African recipient countries showed that foreign aid did not influence development growth [ 12 ]. Another study on 33 aid receiving countries showed that 1% increase in the health aid share of GDP reduced the infant mortality rate by 0.18%. It suggested that the proper management of health aid in developing countries can help to improve public health in these countries [ 11 ]. Another study showed that foreign aid had positive effects on reducing poverty. Aid targeted at pro-poor programs such as agriculture, education, health and other social services has been effective [ 13 ].

Aid alone is not enough for achieving sustainable development. It can be effective in countries committed to improving public services and infrastructure and eradicating corruption [ 14 ]. Even though the foreign aid has been increased in recent years, the healthcare resources have not been enough to guarantee everyone’s access to primary healthcare. There is need for more foreign aid and national investment. The aid should be sustainable, predictable and long-lasting to support health promotion plans. The provision of aid-dependent healthcare services will be disrupted if the donors decrease or postpone the aid [ 15 ].

The impact of aid and its effectiveness can be influenced by the way aid is managed. There are many problems in the management of international aid. A large amount of the aid is not received by the recipient government and is spent on unnecessary activities, parallel programs, transaction costs, and donors’ office administration. Some aid programs do not focus on the needs and priorities of the recipient country. In addition to improving the situation of the disadvantaged groups in recipient countries, capacity and infrastructure building, and enhancing health system management, and procurement are necessary. They help health system to become independent in future and better use the resources. Some governments believe that conflicts in policymaking lead to the waste of resources. The donors do not have interest in capacity building [ 15 ]. Chung and Hwang believe that donors should not determine where and how the resources be used but collaborate with the government to assess the population needs and set the priorities [ 10 ].

A study in Syria showed that harmonization of aid and collaboration between stakeholders are perquisites of aid effectiveness. During 2016–2019, the aid to this country has not been harmonized and correlated with humanitarian needs instead aligning more with donor policies [ 16 ]. Another study in Pakistan found that foreign aid has had positive impact on health sector, although in long run, the effect was low. The reason might be that the aid has not been successful in institutional development. If the management of health system does not improve, the aid will create a debate burden [ 17 ]. In Ethiopia, the policy “one plan, one budget, one report” and foundation of country ownership and coordination of health partners, donors and governments resulted in accomplishments in healthcare [ 18 ].

Paris Declaration on International Aid Effectiveness 2005 offers a series of strategies to commit international donors to accountability and increase aid effectiveness. This document invites the developing countries to reduce poverty and improve the performance of institutions and eliminate corruption, and the donors to align with the goals of the recipient governments and cooperate with them, optimize the processes and share information to avoid duplication. Developing countries and donors should focus on the results and be accountable for them. Donors and recipient governments should take an integrated approach to aid effectiveness in policy making to improve quality of foreign aid [ 19 ].

Most studies focused on the effects of aid on economic growth, poverty and investment. The underlying assumption in Paris Declaration was that changes in process such as reducing aid fragmentation could increase the impact of aid. The Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation 2011 suggests the collaboration of governments, donors, private sector and civil society. Without proper management, international aid cannot help decreasing inequality and promoting development [ 20 ]. Therefore, it is necessary to study aid effectiveness, processes and management.

Data and method

Data and sample size.

This cross-sectional, descriptive and analytical study was conducted in 2022. The research population was the managers of health sector, both public and private, and international institutions based in Herat province of Afghanistan. The participants were chosen by random sampling. Due to the lack of similar studies, the sample size was determined based on Yaman’s formula and considering an error of 5% and the population size of 180, that made 110 people.

The inclusion criteria were at least two years of work experience in the health sector or international organizations. Incomplete questionnaires (more than 50% of the items have not been answered) were excluded from the study.

The data collection tool was the standard questionnaire of the International Health Partnership and Related Initiatives. It constitutes nine main dimensions, including donors’ support for the national health strategy, predictable financing, foreign aid on budget, public finance management system, procurement system, mutual accountability, technical support and training, civil society engagement and private sector participation, each of which has a number of subcategories and a total of 30 questions [ 21 ]. Due to the lack of an Afghan version of this questionnaire, it was translated to local language by two language experts. The content validity of the questionnaire was qualitatively assessed by 5 experts in the health sector in Afghanistan. The ambiguous items were corrected. The internal consistency of the questionnaire was evaluated by consulting 30 healthcare personnel. The stability, balance and homogeneity of the questions were measured through test and retest with the same people and calculating Cronbach’s alpha. The value of Cronbach’s alpha was 0.963, which is an acceptable value and shows the reliability of the tool.

Methodology

The data of this descriptive and analytical study was collected by self-administered approach. Descriptive studies (similar to this one) provide a detailed understanding of a phenomenon, while they might have limited generalizability and potential bias.

Questionnaires were presented to the study participants in person or by phone and email. All methods were performed in accordance with the relevant guidelines and regulations. In this study, the questions were scored from 1 to 5 (very poor to very good). The data was analyzed in two descriptive (mean and percentage) and analytical formats in SPSS. Independent variables were gender, education, managerial level and years of work experience. Scores given to each dimension of aid effectiveness were the dependent variables. Independent t-test (for data with normal distribution) or Mann-Whitney test (for data with non-normal distribution) were used to examine the relationships of the scores of dimensions and independent variables such as gender. Variance analysis was used to examine the relationships of scores and multivariate variables (such as education, age, work experience). Variance analysis shows the data’s volatility and consistency, which can impact the interpretations of the results. The normality of data distribution of quantitative variables was evaluated using the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test. It is used when there are two samples coming from two populations that can be different. The significance level of the tests was considered 5%.

Descriptive statistics

The average age of the study participants was 42.81 ± 8.36, the average work experience was 14.65 ± 6.06 years, and the average management experience was 10.25 ± 5. In addition, 96 people (87.3%) were men, 48.6% had a bachelor’s degree, and 41.3% a master’s degree. 73 people (67%) were middle-ranked managers. 74 people (67.3%) worked with international organizations and 85.5% completed a training course related to international aid. The knowledge of 15.1% of participants on international aid management was at average level. 64.5% of the participants received information about aid management at their workplace. 71 respondent (66.4%) studied medical and health programs (Table  1 ).

Empirical findings

The results of the survey showed that the highest scores were for foreign aid on budget (39/55 ± 20.15), technical support and training (42/50 ± 17.33), and predictable financing (23/50 ± 16.02) and the lowest score was in the field of civil society participation (35.24 ± 18.61) (Table  2 ). The performance in all dimensions of aid management hardly reached 50%.

More details about the dimensions of evaluation are provided in Table  3 . According to this table, the scores in all dimensions were in the range of 30–56. The lowest scores belonged to civil society participation. In general, the scores were very low and proved that all areas of aid management need improvement.

According to Table  4 , the managers of Afghanistan’s health sector and international organizations based in this country gave the lowest scores to the participation of civil society and the private sector in international aid programs, and the highest scores to considering the foreign aid in the budget. They had similar opinions about different dimensions of international aid management (Table  4 ).

The relationships between independent variables (gender and education) and the scores of different dimensions of aid management showed no meaningful difference. There were no changes in the dependent variable due the manipulation of these two independent variables. However, between managerial level and work experience with the scores, there was week relationship (Table  5 ).

The correlation coefficient showed that between the different dimensions of the questionnaire, there were meaningful relationships which mean the variables change together in the same direction. This indicates the strength of the linear relationship between variables. (Table  6 ).

In this cross-sectional study, international aid management in health sector of Afghanistan has been investigated from the perspective of the managers of health facilities and international organizations based in Herat province in 2022. The average age of study participants was 42.81 ± 36.8, the average work experience was 14.65 ± 6.06 years, and management experience of 10.25 ± 5.83 years. The majority of participants were men, had a bachelor’s degree and worked in middle management positions. A large number of participants worked with international organizations and mostly completed training course related to international aid management. Most of the participants were medical and health graduates. One third of them had fair knowledge about international aid management. The majority acquired the knowledge through work experience.

The managers of Afghanistan’s health system and international organizations believed that the management of international aid in health system of this country was at average level (score: 44.52 ± 13.27 (44% achievement).The performance was better in the dimension of aid on budget (55%) and the lowest was related to civil participation (36%). A study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in 34 aid recipient countries showed that all countries were lagging behind the goals set in the Paris Declaration and needed more efforts and cooperation to improve the situation [ 22 ]. A study conducted in 2009 on the effectiveness of international aid in Afghanistan showed that the conditions in this country brough about challenges for the effectiveness of aid. These include: persistent insecurity, lack of national and international capacity, multiple and often inconsistent programs, ambiguous goals, unclear lines between military, humanitarian, and development interventions, widespread corruption, and lack of coordination among donors [ 23 ].

Donors’ support for the national health strategy was not adequate in Afghanistan (score: 50/23 ± 16.02 (50% achievement). There are challenges in developing national health strategies, control and evaluation of health services, evidence based decision-making and the use of national frameworks. A study in 2020, which investigated the impact of international aid on the growth of Afghanistan’s economy, found factors such as the non-cooperation of the Afghan government and donor countries as an obstacle to aid effectiveness. According to this study, in Afghanistan, there is neither an efficient and effective government institution, nor there are appropriate strategies on the use of international aid [ 24 ]. Similarly, the study on the international aid effectiveness in Ethiopia showed that the aid was scattered and there was no coordination between donors and the government and mutual accountability [ 25 ]. A study conducted on international aid dependence and political agreements in Afghanistan showed that aid was usually allocated based on the preferences of the donors rather than the priorities of the recipient country. Aid has largely focused on short-term goals, hindering medium- and long-term progress. Moreover, the aid may not be under the control of the recipient country [ 2 ]. Studies on foreign aid in other countries, including Nepal, showed that lack of attention to national preferences disrupted proper response to people’s needs [ 26 ].

Sometimes, the priorities are defined at global, regional or multi-country programs and often they are not completely aligned with national policies [ 27 ]. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), doners and the recipient countries might have different views on population needs [ 28 ]. Donors have different histories, experiences, and ideas that affect the projects they prefer to support. Sometimes, the lack of coordination and insularity greatly reduce the effectiveness of aid. For example, there are many international institutions and non-governmental organizations operating in Mali. Each of them has its own strategy, values, culture and work process. Acting in isolation and not integrating the goals with the national policies and structure and the lack of cooperation between the private and public sectors have reduced the effectiveness of aid in recent years [ 29 ]. In the allocation of the aid, the less considered issues are usually the goals of the recipient country [ 30 ]. The lack of coordination between donors is the most important challenge of aid management. Sustainable and effective change depends on the institutionalization of all policies at the local level [ 31 ]. A study by the African Development Bank in 2011 showed that the conflict of interests, weakness of the structures and the lack of capacity were the main challenges of international aid effectiveness. Short-term perspectives disrupt long term development plans [ 32 ].

The predictability of financing received an average score (55/39 ± 20.15 (55% achievement)) in this study which shows that the distribution of health financial resources, allocating aid based on the predetermined plans, and financing health centers through government’s long-term budget and the knowledge of the government on international donors’ programs are problematic. In a study by the Asian Development Bank in 2011, the predictability of development cooperation in Asian countries was evaluated at 78%, which was higher than Afghanistan [ 32 ]. To increase the predictability, it is necessary to have a comprehensive and transparent information system. A case study on international aid effectiveness in health sector of Ethiopia showed that no systematic and comprehensive data on the flow of aid was available [ 25 ]. In a study investigating the management of international aid in a developing country showed that transparency was an important indicator for identifying the problems, weaknesses and gaps in various areas of economic development. The study concluded that it is necessary to increase the involvement of interest groups in formulating strategies and policies [ 33 ].

According to the study participants, about 55% of international aid was placed in national budget. The donors set different strategies in this regard. For example, Italy recognizes the full ownership of the country’s health and medical institutions and gives the responsibility to implement the interventions to the local authorities in Afghanistan [ 34 ]. In contrast, spending a large part of Germany’s aid outside the Afghan government’s system has weakened the government and harmed the accountability of aid recipient institutions [ 35 ]. Similarly, conflicting programs or overlapping projects implemented by different donors reduced the effectiveness of aid according to Albanians [ 33 ]. In Africa, international aid does not flow through the government’s budget system, and is spent by non-governmental organizations or individuals. Local governments do not have enough information about the resources and projects [ 36 ]. Another study on the flow of aid in programs to fight tuberculosis, AIDS and malaria showed that there was no coherence between aid at the national level; aid was not flexible and a small part of it entered the government budget [ 27 ]. In a study that examined international aid management in Ethiopia, it was found that the government played an important role in coordinating international aid. In this country, there are specific national health programs in which the role of international aid is clear [ 25 ].

According to the respondents of this study, strengthening the financial management system of the public sector was not a priority for the donors (achieving 38% of the standard). WHO, in coordination with all key stakeholders in Afghanistan, helps to increase overall resources for health and improve the effectiveness of the investments [ 37 ]. However, the study by Dastan et al. about the determinants of financial protection in the health sector of Afghanistan showed that there was an urgent need to strengthen the overall health financing system in order to promote public health in this country [ 38 ]. Besharat Hossein reviewed the effects of international aid in Bangladesh and said the aid had little effectiveness due to the limited capacity of Bangladeshi institutions. If the government reforms its institutions and policies, foreign aid can contribute more effectively to the national economy [ 39 ]. In another study conducted by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) on international aid allocated to less developed countries, found that donors’ financial resources can be hardly tracked due to the lack of a financial information system. The absence of transparency in spending resources reduced the donors’ trust [ 31 ]. A study in Sri Lanka showed that inefficiency of financial resources and weak institutions made foreign aid ineffective. In addition to effective policies, proper monitoring system supported by donors, and preventing the misuse of resources are needed [ 40 ].

Strengthening the supply system of the recipient country is an important part of aid management. It was scored 40.97 ± 19.55 (41% achievement). In Afghanistan, this aspect has not received enough attention. The donors’ support and use of the national procurement system need improvement. A study on the pros and cons of foreign aid in Albania indicated that donors were reluctant to use Albania’s public procurement systems. Strategic agreements between donors and the government, and forming working groups were suggested to adjust the aid flow [ 41 ]. The study of the Asian Development Bank on aid recipient countries showed that 47% of the aid flows through the public procurement systems. Further coordination between governments and donors is necessary [ 32 ]. The results of this study are similar to the present study.

In the current study, mutual responsibility of the donors and the government was not optimum (score:46.50 ± 19.26 (46% achievement)). There should be an evaluation system agreed with two parties. According to the report of the OECD, the mutual accountability in Afghanistan is a serious challenge, especially since the government and the donors insist on their own political goals, which creates an atmosphere of distrust and makes the implementation of programs difficult [ 22 ]. Asian Development Bank in 2011 indicated that countries were scored 54% in establishing mutual accountability and supporting the government in achieving its goals [ 32 ]. A study on foreign aid policy and its effect on Nepal’s growth showed that the capacity of country’s economy to implement programs was less than satisfactory due to the lack of proper information system and regular monitoring [ 42 ]. In Nigeria, the donors needed to monitor the implementation of plans and effective use of foreign aid. Without making political, economic and institutional reforms, the massive influx of foreign aid will be futile [ 43 ]. A review of foreign aid in Africa in 2012 concluded that responsible governance in this continent is a key to economic development [ 44 ].

Technical support and training help the recipient countries to better contribute in implementing the programs. Considering technical assistance in national programs and health strategies and supporting multilateral cooperation are necessary. The score of technical support in this study was 50.24 ± 17.33 (50%). The study of the Asian Development Bank showed that 45% of the donors paid attention to capacity building and education in recipient countries [ 32 ]. The Geneva Conference 2018 addressed the development of infrastructure and sustainable development in developing countries. The Kabul Conference 2010 focused on the rule of law and good governance and development. The International Monetary Fund supported establishing flexible and sustainable systems for health in Afghanistan [ 45 ]. In recent years, the spending on improving health sector management and policymaking has increased significantly. The aid focused on strengthening the health system through capacity building and planning [ 46 ]. In the absence of a proper support system, the aid is spent on daily affairs and does not lead to the transfer of technology and enhancing the capabilities of the country [ 47 ].

According to the WHO, low salaries and inappropriate working conditions discouraged the few skilled managers and entrepreneurs to participate in international aid projects in Afghanistan. The shortage of female healthcare providers is evident in this country [ 28 ]. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) launched a midwifery training program to increase the number of female health workers and give women more access to necessary care. USAID created a system for monitoring and supported national diseases information system [ 48 ]. A study showed the need for skilled and knowledgeable managers committed to national values, and teamwork to determine priorities and establish a strong monitoring system. Unbalanced distribution of resources, lack of coordination, unnecessary costs, low efficiency and the lack of infrastructure are among the challenges of the country’s reconstruction process [ 49 ]. There have been various studies on the effectiveness of training provided by donors. The program of transferring technical skills to Afghan government employees by Germany has not been successful enough due to the lack of a monitoring system. Trained employees would not like to work in government facilities due to low wages. After acquiring the necessary skills, they are attracted to non-governmental organizations. Enhancing aid effectiveness requires a change in human resources strategies and enhancing security [ 35 ].

Civil society involvement in health sector programs and development is essential. The society should be empowered by receiving information, technical support and opportunities to participate. The Ministry of Health and the World Bank play important roles in supporting healthcare projects through non-governmental organizations [ 50 ]. However, this study showed that civil participation was not adequate (score: 35.24 ± 18.61, (35% achievement). A study in Albania concluded that the technical assistance and capacity building provided by donors and increasing the awareness of the civil society were among the benefits of aid assistance [ 41 ]. in Nepal, civil participation in country’s development is a challenge. Similar to Afghanistan, this country has religious and linguistic diversity, which together with its uneven terrain and inefficient government acts as an obstacle to national unity for growth [ 42 ]. Civil society needs information to participate in aid management. This information should be understood and analyzed by the civil society and encourage cooperation [ 51 ]. According to OECD, non-governmental organizations and the private sector are weak in developing countries. Lack of capacity hiders them to play their role in the development of the country [ 22 ].

Private sector participation received the lowest score (36 ± 17.55 (36% achievement), among different dimensions of aid management in Afghanistan. Private sector participation in the development and implementation of health sector policies needs donors’ support, information, and financial and technical assistance. The donors can achieve the goals of aid with the support of the private sector and the government. Because of people’s lack of trust to the government administrative system and the desire to achieve tangible results, the private sector compete with government organizations in attracting donated resources, but still they are depended on the support of the government. Some countries, such as the Netherlands, make financial support subject to allocating a part of the aid budget to non-governmental organizations. But, in low-income countries, this organizations do not have enough skills, information and power to cooperate with donors [ 52 ].

In recent years, the private sector has grown in Afghanistan. The government is determined to develop a solid policy framework and establish institutions and systems aimed at ensuring higher quality private services and a long-term and sustainable role for the private sector. Afghanistan is at the beginning of privatization; evidence shows that the Ministry of Health can promote a more efficient and effective private sector [ 53 ]. Based on the report of the UNCTAD, if donors cooperate with the private sector and civil society to set priorities and implement programs, the aid can be effective [ 31 ].

The performance in all dimensions of aid management hardly reached 50%. The managers of Afghanistan’s health sector and international organizations based in this country believed that international aid management in Afghanistan’s health sector needs to be improved. The standards of the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness could be helpful in this regard. According to the studied managers, the best dimension of aid management was the inclusion of international aid in government budget. However, civil society involvement and the private sector participation in planning and implementing aid programs was not satisfactory.

This study showed the areas of aid management that needs improvement in Afghanistan. According to the results, in order to improve international aid management, it is necessary to improve the resources management with the cooperation of international donors, to strengthen health planning, and to develop an effective administrative and management system. Promoting transparency, accountability, and fighting against corruption are the perquisites of aid effectiveness. Economic and social development and investment in infrastructure and cooperation between the government and donors and the private sector will improve public governance. Finding ways to reduce the dependence of the health sector on international aid will be a sustainable solution. The government of Afghanistan should determine the needs of its population and direct the aid towards the priorities of the country which cannot be achieved with government budget.

Study limitations and future studies guidelines

Data collection coincided with the change of government in Afghanistan. The participants of the study stated that due to the extensive changes in administrative and management structures and unclear processes, their opinions addressed the situation before the changes in 2021. Still, this study provides areas for the improvement of aid management in the studied country. Future studies can build upon the findings of this research and conduct in-depth exploration of areas of aid effectiveness and designing detailed programs of improvement. A joint plan for improvement and collaboration of different stakeholders is needed.

Data availability

Data are not publicly available to preserve individuals’ privacy.

Abbreviations

Gross Domestic Product

Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development

United States Agency for International Development

World Health Organization

United Nations Conference on Trade and Development

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FK designed the study and supervised it; NR: collected data and wrote the report; HSH and JJ: designed methods and analysis; LA: wrote the paper;

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Rashed, N., Shabanikiya, H., Alizamani, L. et al. International aid management in Afghanistan’s health sector from the perspective of national and international managers. BMC Health Serv Res 24 , 1001 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-024-11260-0

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-024-11260-0

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