Making Motivation Matter in Grant Proposals: Recommendations From an Experienced Motivation Scholar, Administrator, and Panelist

• In Event: 51.064 - Grant Writing for Motivation Research: A Guide for Early Career Researchers

Abstract

Whereas it would be wonderful if federal, state, and private foundations regularly funded empirical research that directly addresses academic motivation, such opportunities are extremely limited. In this brief presentation, I will share strategies that I have used for securing funds to support motivation research. Specifically, there are multiple ways in which motivation research questions can be incorporated into requests for proposals that focus on related topics. I will share in particular how I have been able to successfully build motivation research questions into several grant proposals that have been successfully funded.

My primary examples will focus on how I have incorporated motivation research questions into studies of HIV and pregnancy prevention in high school health classrooms. I will use this as an example of how a researcher can incorporate motivation research questions into fundable opportunities, without compromising the integrity of the motivation research. Specifically, I was fortunate to have been able to work collaboratively with a group of researchers who all explored HIV and pregnancy prevention from diverse perspectives. Our research group included faculty and graduate students with expertise in a variety of domains (e.g., educational psychology, anthropology, behavioral medicine, social psychology, and health communications). Over the course of several years, we began to incorporate measures of student motivation, based in goal orientation theory and expectancy value theory, into our school-based intervention studies. Over time, we demonstrated that the motivation variables are important factors that contribute to adolescents’ learning about HIV and pregnancy prevention, and also to engagement in future health-promoting (or health hindering) behaviors. These collaborations yielded four NIH funded grants (each for over $ 1 million in direct costs), and numerous publications that focus specifically on academic motivation I will end this portion of the presentation with specific suggestions for how motivation research questions could be incorporated into opportunities that are available through IES, NIH, and NSF.

As a secondary focus of the presentation, I will provide advice based on my experience as an administrator and grant panelist. For example, drawing from my role as Chair of a large department at a Research-1 university, I will discuss the (a) “do’s and don’ts” of pursuing funding as an ECR at an R-1 institution; (b) extent to which motivation ECRs should prioritize grants relative to other scholarly pursuits (e.g., journal articles); and (c) importance of obtaining funding for tenure and promotion. For example, assistant professors often have difficulty deciding on how to balance grant-writing opportunities with the pressure to publish; I have mentored numerous junior faculty through this process, and will share specific examples regarding how such decisions can be made. Finally, drawing from my experience serving on and chairing grant panels, I will discuss strategies that can “make or break” the success of a motivation grant proposal.

Author

• Eric M. Anderman, The Ohio State University