The Specific Aims page and the research strategy
The Specific Aims page presents a research proposal's problem, hypothesis, planned work and expected impact in one page. The research strategy develops the significance, innovation and approach behind it.
The application format
Before 2012, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) shortened its standard application from 25 pages to 13: a one-page Specific Aims section and a twelve-page Research Strategy. The reorganisation aligned the format more closely with the review criteria: Research Design and Methods, previously comprising Background, Significance, Preliminary Studies and Methods, became Research Strategy, comprising Significance, Innovation and Approach, with preliminary studies included where appropriate.
The Specific Aims page is the proposal's primary marketing document: it defines the big picture and provides a roadmap for the research strategy. In one page it must gain reviewers' trust and confidence, show why the work merits funding and convince them that the applicant is the best person to do it; this can make it the most difficult section to write. A fully reviewed and edited Specific Aims page serves as a synopsis of the application.
The page's audience and message
Many reviewers read only the Specific Aims page. They are often tired and overworked, may spend only a few hours on an application, and know research design, methods and NIH grant mechanisms but may have little detailed knowledge of its particular field. The page should offer something special and resemble a good news article: concise, clearly headlined, visually appealing, easy to read and comprehensible to a wide audience, addressing all reviewers. A page that leaves reviewers unexcited will likely colour their response to the sections that follow.
NIH instructions reproduced in 2019 called for concise research goals, expected outcomes and their impact on the field, and a succinct list of specific objectives. Those objectives could include testing a hypothesis, creating a novel design, solving a problem, challenging a paradigm or clinical practice, addressing a critical barrier to progress, or developing new technology. The page's organisation runs from the overarching problem and goal and the project's context, through the central hypothesis, aims and experimental overview, to expected outcomes and impact.
A four-part outline
A suggested Specific Aims outline has four parts.
- Introduction. Convince reviewers that a significant problem needs a solution relevant to the funder's mission. The opening sentence identifies the proposal's subject and immediately relates it to that mission. Summarise the current literature and state of the field in five sentences, introducing all key points, then identify the unknowns. Frame the critical need that drives the proposal and conclude with why the lack of a solution matters to this funder.
- What, why and whom. State the principal investigator's broad career goal, which should match the funding agency; the narrower application objective, with a well-defined endpoint addressing the critical need; and the central hypothesis. Explain the rationale: what completing the aims will make possible and why this matters to the agency's mission. Explain the team's collective competitive advantage and preparedness to solve the problem.
- Aims. Develop the key hypotheses and activities logically, step by step, to fulfil the objectives and address the need. The paragraphs should collectively address the objectives, be conceptual rather than descriptive, and avoid aims dependent on other aims' outcomes. A suggested format gives each numbered aim a brief, focused statement followed by details including measurements and comparisons.
- Payoff and impact. Follow the aims, goals and objectives with an innovative or transformative statement that builds advocacy for the project. Give specific, credible expectations, explain how the outcomes meet the identified need, and convey how the work could change the world.
After completing the research strategy and Specific Aims page, it may help to check the following.
- What experimental outcomes are expected, with at least one important outcome per aim?
- How do they collectively achieve the overall objective stated in the hypothesis?
- What will become possible or known that was not possible or known before, in knowledge benefiting human health and disease and in advancement of the research field?
The answers should be communicated so that reviewers can easily locate the outcomes on the Specific Aims page. A persuasive four-paragraph aims proposition can run from defining a critical need to demonstrating the potential return on investment. Some published approaches to constructing the page provide evaluation rubrics that may be useful to a consulting medical writer.
Coherence across the research strategy
Reviewers are drawn to proposals that establish four things.
- The investigator has delineated an urgent problem.
- An innovative, scientifically credible idea addresses that problem.
- The proposed plan is well designed to test the idea.
- The investigative team and research environment can execute the plan.
These elements draw on several application sections.
| Element | Contributing material |
|---|---|
| Problem | Scientific literature, standard of care and knowledge gap |
| Idea | Aims and hypotheses, and preliminary data |
| Plan | Approach and innovation |
| Capacity | Personnel and biosketches, facilities, budget, equipment, human or animal subjects, and letters of support |
Clinician-scientists are generally most comfortable explaining their plan to gain knowledge and drive clinical innovation; inspiring urgency about the knowledge gap, curiosity about the hypothesis and confidence in their capacity is less intuitive for a novice. In most successful grants these elements begin to crystallise on the Specific Aims page and are emphasised throughout the later sections. A medical writer can help convey them consistently, concisely and effectively across the proposal, and integrating all four elements improves the probability of an outstanding impact score.
Common section problems
An overly ambitious plan with too many specific aims is the biggest problem encountered in an editorial practice reviewing the one-page Specific Aims precis. Significance and Innovation should have separate focuses; reorganising and clarifying their text can help it meet NIH requirements and reviewers' expectations. The Approach describes planned experiments but can lack details needed to establish feasibility or fail to address the hypotheses directly. Reviewers expect potential problems and alternative approaches to be explained, including responses if a hypothesis falls short or technical problems arise.