FEDERAL
SECTOR REPORT
April 1998
(c) P2C2 Group,
Inc.
How
to Prepare a Research Proposal
Book Review. Winning a
government research grant or contract is an arduous undertaking, as is
the case for most proposal competitions. Fortunately, we have a coach
in the form of David R. Krathwohl, who has written HOW TO PREPARE A
RESEARCH PROPOSAL, distributed by
Syracuse University Press. He provides a roadmap for the journey. The
third edition of the paperback was published in 1988, and Krathwohl
tells me that there will soon be an updated edition of the paperback.
For ordering, the ISBN is 0-8156-8112-7/KRHTP.
The
book is
directly applicable to research in education, the social
sciences, program evaluation, and the behavior of individuals and
organizations. This is understandable because Krathwohl is past
president of the American Educational Research Association and of the
Educational Psychology Division of the American Psychological
Association, and he uses examples that are
applicable to his field. However, with only a modicum of inference, the
issues of research design, the tight logic required, and the procedures
for proposal preparation are generic to the sciences.
The
book also
has sections that will be useful to government
contractors and grantees that are not primarily interested in research
projects. For
operational information technology (IT) projects, many government
agencies
are expecting contractors to capture and report "metrics" about
performance--data
necessary for operational management and documentation of "past
performance"
in future proposals. In addition, proposals for service delivery
(education,
training, technical assistance) must also include a project evaluation
component, and some of the methodological issues in Krathwohl's book
are relevant.
Why
Proposals
Fail. Midway through the book is an
attention-getting Chapter 10, Why Proposals Fail: Studies of
Disapproved Proposals. Rather than rely on his own opinions, Krathwohl
cites three studies that investigated why grant proposals failed to be
funded for projects related to health, handicapped children, and
educational research. The studies are quite old (1960s), but
interesting nonetheless: Despite the proposal developer's typical
trepidation about budgets, the cost proposal was the least frequent
cause of disapprovals (though some were rejected for this reason). On
the other hand, the proposal section that was most commonly an
Achilles' heel of disapproved proposals was that dealing with the
Procedure or
Approach. That is, the proposal failed to give a convincing and logical
explanation of how the researcher would carry out the project. Other
proposal deficiencies encountered included "little likelihood that the
research would produce new or useful information," nebulous statements
of the research problem, lack of training or experience on the part of
the investigator, poor prior research record, and heavy reliance on
inexperienced
associates.
The
heart of
the book is the first major section, Preparing and
Submitting the Proposal. A chapter is devoted to each element: defining
and stating the research problem, describing the procedure (methodology
or technical approach), resources such as personnel and facilities, and
the submission/negotiation process. The chapters provide a roadmap
through the entire process, and the author clearly describes how each
step must be constructed to achieve fit with the previous step.
Pointers
on
Research Design. Given that I took my last
formal academic course in research methodology during the time of
Copernicus, I particularly enjoyed reviewing the research design issues
in the section on procedures. Things like sampling design, control
groups, and double-blind studies are etched in my brain, but several
issues were freshly re-introduced. One of the most fascinating was the
"regression effect," a subtle but very serious error that may occur
when one selects the top or bottom individuals
(such as the first or fifth quintiles) as the focus of the study. An
explanation of this problem is given, but the "bottom line" problem is
that re-testing my produce change, but the differences may be spurious.
The cause is that tests are an approximation of reality, and scores in
retesting may tend to gravitate slightly toward the mean of the entire
population.
In
addition
to design issues, the procedure section includes
management-oriented "methods" like the use of PERT and GANTT charts, as
well as workload analysis
tables. The samples of proposal page layouts expose the fact that the
currently-available edition of the book has been in circulation for
nearly
10 years. Character-oriented, 1980s-style layouts are the mode, rather
than formats that take advantage of the desktop publishing capabilities
of today's computers.
Useful
Aids. A section on Aids to Proposal
Preparation can
be quite handy to developers of research proposals. One chapter
addresses how to adapt material to specialized research--such as
evaluations, longitudinal studies, case studies, etc. Helpful to all
are sections about how to critique
your proposal, a checklist for complex proposals, and how to analyze
your unsuccessful proposals. Of interest to academic institutions will
be the sections on Finding Funding and Sections, and Insights for
Beginners
and Doctoral Students. The appendices contain useful bibliographies and
information sources, though these are somewhat dated.
I
found
this book worth adding to my proposal development
reference library. I look forward to reading Krathwohl's updated
edition.
