The specific aims page, especially the aims themselves, are the crux of your grant application. Use the following tips to write a strong, clear specific aims page. Use the Specific Aims Page Checklist to assess your writing and to ensure that you have included all of the necessary components.
Create a focused lead paragraph that has a "funnel shape" conceptually.
Lead the reader from the general to the specific, so that by the time your specific aims appear, it's clear what gap in the literature you're addressing and how this new knowledge will fit into the field. This introduction should also indicate how this proposal builds upon your previous data.
Example: "The mechanism by which cirrhosis of the liver occurs in a subset of patients with Cystic Fibrosis is unknown. Our data over the past 3 years has demonstrated that gene X is a candidate modifier gene by crossing Cystic Fibrosis knockout mice with gene X deficient mice. This proposal will build upon these results and test the hypothesis that Gene X is a modifier gene through its fibrogenic activation properties."
Strive to create one clear hypothesis first that will be tested through your specific aims. Know the difference between specific aims and long-term goals.
Note: Depending on the grant you are seeking, this rule may not be possible or desirable. For example, if you are applying for an R01 grant in health services/outcomes research, the typical grant in this area has a data collection project at its core that often addresses more than one goal. Therefore, the nature of the project is often briefly described in the last sentence of the introduction, rather than in the specific aims.
Example: "We will conduct a multi-center, prospective, longitudinal study of 1000 patients undergoing bone marrow transplantation for hematologic malignancies in order to. "
Do: "Three cloves of garlic per day cure colon cancer through activation of the caspase death pathway in tumor cells."
Don't: "There are various chemicals within garlic that have different effects on all cells including tumor cells."
Your specific aims is the crux of your proposal so make sure they are concise and highly focused. Get them critiqued, and rewrite until the aims are solid and provide a foundation for the rest of your proposal.
Ensure that your specific aims will provide clear results and that they test your hypothesis.
Do: Hypothesis: "Three cloves of garlic per day cure colon cancer through activation of the caspase death pathway in tumor cells." Specific Aims: "1. Test in vitro in T84 colon cancer cells and in vivo in a mouse model of colon cancer that garlic activates the caspase death pathway. 2. Activation of this caspase pathway leads to tumor regression."
Don't: Hypothesis: "There are various chemicals within garlic that have different effects on all cells including tumor cells." Specific aims: "1. We will explore whether incubating different cell types in vitro with garlic affects cell survival. 2. Garlic proteins will be extracted and analyzed by mass spectroscopy."
Write specific aims that test a single, overarching hypothesis, and not individual aims connected to their own hypotheses.
Note: Depending on the grant you are seeking, this rule may not be possible or desirable. For example, if you are applying for an R01 grant in health services/outcomes research, the typical grant in this area has a data collection project at its core that often addresses more than one goal. Therefore, the nature of the project is often briefly described in the last sentence of the introduction, rather than in the specific aims.
Example: "We will conduct a multi-center prospective, longitudinal study of 1000 patients undergoing bone marrow transplantation for hematologic malignancies in order to. "
Convey specific aims that indicate why you want to do the work, what you want to do, and how you will do it.
Include no more than three aims and no sub-aims, if possible. Generally, you should not have four or more aims with sub-aims and/or their own hypotheses.
The rubric below provides recommendations for a Specific Aims page of a NIH K grant application. In addition to overall considerations, this rubric is broken up into four parts that correspond to the four sections of a Specific Aims page: the introduction paragraph, the body paragraph(s), the specific aims themselves, and the closing, or impact paragraph.
Use this rubric after you’ve completed a Specific Aims page draft to ensure that you have included all the necessary components. Review the completed rubric and carefully note any unchecked boxes. Review the resources linked throughout this document and use them to improve your Specific Aims page.
Please Note: While this rubric is meant to be a comprehensive resource, we acknowledge that there is no singular correct way to write a grant application and in some cases, deviation from this rubric may be warranted.
In this section:
