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Concept Paper Overview
A concept paper provides a means of generating feedback and guidance from a program officer before a full grant proposal is developed. In most cases, the program officer will be a current or former researcher or clinician. Before you start writing, think about the Golden Rule and the kind of project summary you’d like to read. Avoid forced language, and communicate your ideas in a simple, direct manner. Also, read your sponsor’s mission statement. If the sponsor is a federal agency, you might look at its most recent budget request to Congress. This request will discuss the agency’s priorities.
Design your paper to answer these questions:
- What’s the problem?
- State the problem/gap in a manner that’s concise and demonstrates your grasp of the literature.
- If you’re proposing a research project, state the research objective(s) and hypothesis.
- Who cares? (This question has both figurative and literal meanings.)
- What is the significance of the project in terms of both advancing knowledge and benefiting the public?
- Who/which group(s) will benefit from the research?
- What exactly are going to do? (How will you address the problem?)
- Provide goals/specific aims.
- What is the study design? For problems involving data samples, how do you know that the sample size is adequate?
- Provide a statement about your access to the population, if applicable.
- Communicate why you are ideally suited to tackle this specific problem and/or what is unique about your approach.
- What will the deliverables be?
- Examples: Outreach events, grant applications, trained individuals/groups, new or improved products or services, patents, partnerships, paradigms, process improvements, dissemination products, etc.
- How will you know you’ve achieved your goals?
- Depending on the project, evaluation can be pivotal. A summary of the evaluation process isn’t necessary to obtain initial feedback about your project; however, a discussion of this topic may prompt your program officer to provide valuable guidance.
- Who are your collaborators?
- For interinstitutional or interdisciplinary partnerships, discuss any history of successful collaboration.
The optimal format depends on your project. Not every concept paper needs to address all of the above questions; nor is the order of information fixed.