Show Me the Money – Funding OHP Science

SOHP Science Networking Event Session Summary

Blog post by Rebecca Brossoit

SOHP’s Scientific Affairs committee hosted a series of virtual Science Networking Events in Fall 2022 that brought together researchers to discuss a variety of occupational health psychology topics with networking opportunities. This blog summarizes highlights from the following event:

Show Me the Money – Funding OHP Science

Gwen Fisher, Tori Crain, & Daisy Chang

October 25, 2022

Event Introduction

Participant compensation, paid research assistants, fancy survey software, and data collection gadgets. Developing impactful OHP science requires funding to support research careers across different levels. Writing grant proposals is also a special skill that is unique from typical research reports. This session was devoted to information on funding opportunities and best practices for writing proposals and responding to funding calls. Our three panelists included:

This session was hosted by Gloria González-Morales and Lacie Barber. Other Scientific Affairs committee members include Katrina Burch, Courtney Keim, and Rebecca Brossoit.

Discussion Highlights

The transcript excerpts below have been lightly edited for brevity or interpretation.

On aligning your research with calls for proposals…

  • Gwen – If you are writing a grant based on a call for proposals or in response to a particular RFP, make sure what you write in the grant is aligned with what that request is for. Oftentimes, you might do research on a particular topic, but in order to help make it fit a particular call, you may need to alter or shift or modify your research question to fit that. Keep in mind what is being requested and who the audience is. 
  • Daisy – If you’re writing to respond to a particular call, make sure that you check with the program officer for that call. You want to make sure that the way you’re framing your work is consistent with what they’re looking for or at least within the broad range of what you’re targeting.

On the importance of seeking help throughout the process…

  • Tori – I’ve had mentors who I met with early on and said: “Here’s my one-page idea, here’s what they’re looking for in the call, do you think this fits, do you think it’s a good idea?”. Building in time later on to have mentors help review the full proposal with you is also really helpful. I can’t speak enough to the importance, as a junior person, of seeking mentors who can help you.
  • Daisy – I think it’s really, really important, if possible, to find mentors outside your immediate area – outside of I/O or OHP – perhaps a social psychologist, a cognitive psychologist, or a clinical psychologist. If you have access to scholars that do work in occupational safety and health more generally – someone in occupational nursing, medicine, ergonomics, engineering – to read your proposal, they give valuable feedback. 
  • Tori – The other thing I’ve found helpful in seeking out funding opportunities is to go to my research office on campus (sometimes under research administration or office of sponsored projects). You can meet with someone there, tell them what your research is, and they can oftentimes hook you up with different funding opportunities. They also tend to have a listserv or email announcements that go out about funding opportunities – you all probably have resources and people at your university who are collecting a lot of those funding mechanisms for you and are willing and excited to share them with you.

On time management during the grant writing process…

  • Daisy – Think backwards – figure out what your university’s deadline is in terms of internal submission. Oftentimes, the budgetary piece will be due earlier because that piece requires multiple layers of approval. Make sure that you build in enough time for all of that to go through the system. 
  • Gwen – Be strategic about where you’re applying and what the likelihood of success is, especially if you have limited time and you need to choose how to spend that time.  
  • Daisy – If you start early, that gives you a lot more time to prepare. This also means that you might be able to gather more information beyond the content-oriented information for your proposal. For example, your university might have prior successful proposals that you might be able to take a look at. You might also contact other researchers who are willing to share their prior successful proposals. All that takes time. Having that extra time becomes very handy and helpful.

On advantages and disadvantages of small and large grants…

  • Tori – Smaller grant mechanisms are oftentimes really great for new investigators because you get something on your resume, you get experience running a smaller grant and working with the administrative staff who help you manage the grant, and that can really set you up well for bigger grant opportunities down the road. 
  • Daisy – Some of the challenges associated with getting money is that you never want to be in a situation where you feel like all you’re trying to do is get more money, and you forget the reason why you’re trying to get money is to do your work. That’s the danger sometimes, of when you get into this rhythm of getting small pots of money to move the needle a little bit more towards what you want to do. Sometimes you end up buried by the paperwork – mid-term reports, final reports, certifications – so, you don’t want to end up being bogged down by those and not actually be able to do the work you proposed to do. 
  • Gwen – One of the benefits of a small grant is that usually the application itself is shorter and much less complicated. Some of those larger grants ($100,000 and larger) can get really complicated. The advantage of the smaller grants is they are easier to put together and manage. Oftentimes, those pilot grants and smaller grant mechanisms exist not only to really support junior investigators, early career scientists, and graduate students, but also to give folks at that career stage opportunities so the data that they get from the smaller projects can lead to future grant funding. 

Watch the Full Discussion

SOHP members can access the full session recording here. If you aren’t yet a member, please consider joining to access these recordings and other great SOHP membership benefits! Here are some other topics covered in the recording:

  • How do I find calls for grant funding proposals?
  • What agencies and institutions fund OHP research?
  • What role do professional grant writers play?
  • What are indirect costs?
  • Learn additional tips and strategies for applying for and managing grants

Dr. Rebecca Brossoit is an Assistant Professor in the Psychology Department at Louisiana State University. Dr. Brossoit earned her PhD in Industrial and Organizational Psychology from Colorado State University and completed a graduate traineeship in Occupational Health Psychology through the Mountain and Plains Education Research Center. Her research broadly focuses on how to support workers’ sleep and their lives outside of work, and how to protect workers’ safety and well-being while they are at work. To practice OHP principles in her own life, she aims to prioritize her sleep, make time for hobbies, and spend time outside.