Funding for 1 year “seed projects” will be available in year 4 pending continued funding by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. These are resources for pilot projects, exploratory research to prepare for a larger grant application, or similar efforts. We will fund between 1 and 4 projects depending upon the proposed budgets of projects. Seed project proposals may come from doctoral students, postdocs or faculty and will range in amount from $5K to a maximum of $20K over 12 months.
Applications will be accepted from faculty, pre-doctoral or post-doctoral students and are open to Washington University, Saint Louis University, and University of Missouri schools. Applications are due on March 23rd. They will receive two scores, an initial screening score by a subcommittee drawn from the Scientific Advisory Team (SAT), with a final decision made by the Research Advisory Board. The decision to have a two part process is to insure that applications receive review by the national experts to help gauge potential to advance the field.
Applications are limited to 5 pages, single spaced, no less than 11 point type with 1 inch margins. Page limit includes a 200 word abstract. The budget and justification is not counted in the page limit. Applications will be rated by the following criteria:
(1) Project fits intent of the call: Developmental work that leads to either innovative approaches to prevention/intervention OR implementation/replication of evidence-based approaches to translate them into new settings or for new populations.
(2) Background: A background section explaining how it advances prevention of CM, IPV, SV, SA and/or related injuries in the real world. Injuries may include physical or psychosocial injuries. So, for example, a project may involve primary prevention or serve victims or child witnesses of violence to prevent later mental health or behavioral problems. Preference will be given to those which relate to the intertwined nature of the types of violence and related injury and the developmental stage foci of the BCVIP.
(3) Methods: These may be qualitative or quantitative with an analysis plan appropriate to the research question and anticipated sample size. Research plan must be feasible given the 12 month time frame.
(4) Implications: Importance for and direction of future work is well specified.
(5) An appropriate human subjects plan is included.
(6) Research team/or investigator is appropriate given proposed work.
(7) Budget is reasonable given the scope of work and timeframe.
A volunteer subcommittee of the SAT will initially score the applications using a 7 point likert scale (from “does not address” to “exceeds expectations”) for each of the 7 components with a brief statement justifying the rating for each component. The CVIP administrative team will be responsible for summarizing committee comments for each application. Based on the summary scores, applications will be narrowed to a pool of finalists (up to 6). Then the final scoring will be conducted by the National Research Advisory Board members.
Applicants will be notified by May 1st of year 3 (2012) with funds available beginning the first month (August) of fiscal year 4. Successful applicants will be required to complete Institutional Review Boards for human subjects as well as any partner agency review boards prior to conduct of the research. Recipients will be required to provide brief quarterly updates with a final summary due by September 1st of 2013.