If I convinced you that grant writing matters for many different post-PhD jobs, you may be wondering how in the world you can get grant funding. Trying to get external funding can be a daunting task, particularly for a new faculty member who has never pursued such funding before, and is juggling research, teaching, and service. Even knowing where to apply for funding can be confusing at the start. Most people know about NIH as a potential funding source, but there are many other possible sources that people may not as quickly consider. I wanted to review these sources today – and also discuss the differences between grants and contracts.
 
These sources apply both to faculty, and to research associates in a range of different positions discussed in my recent post. 

• Government agencies: These are often the ones that people think of when they think about pursuing external grants, and include some of the same ones you might pursue during graduate school or for a post doc, such as NIH, NSF, IES, NIJ, CDC, ACYF, USDA, FDA, DoD, and military branches.  One challenge with funding from these federal agencies is they sometimes have restrictions on citizenship status.
• State agencies: obviously which state agencies fund research varies by the state you live in. Several of my UConn HDFS colleagues have funding from CT state agencies, and it was not as frequent among my Penn State colleagues. I don’t know if this difference indicates different opportunities in the states, or different preferences among the faculty. But, sources in CT, as an example, include:
  • Department of Administrative Services/The Office for Workforce Competitiveness
  • Department of Children & Families
  • Department of Economic and Community Affairs
  • Department of Education and Education Connection
  • Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services
  • Department of Social Services
  • Judicial Branch
  • Office of Policy and Management
• Foundations and agencies:  Funding from foundations and agencies can be very different from funding from government, and in particular, federal agencies. Federal agencies almost always have specific forms to complete and specific deadlines for when you apply. Some foundations have similar procedures, but others work more one-on-one with potential grantees. More so than with federal agencies, knowing someone personally can often help with foundation funding. Sometimes, you cannot apply for foundation funding unless invited. Here are some examples of foundations that are often relevant to HDFS faculty and alumni:
  • American Cancer Association
  • American Heart Association
  • American Psychological Foundation
  • Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
  • Foundation for Child Development
  • Kaiser Family Foundation
  • Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
  • Spencer Foundation
  • Social Science Research Council
  • Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues
  • Templeton Foundation
  • WT Grant Foundation
• Community-based agencies: These tend to be smaller agencies than the foundations listed above, and are often doing more direct translational and applied research than theory testing. Often they will partner with local researchers to address a very specific question such as to assess efficacy of a particular intervention, to do a needs assessment, or to develop a new prevention program.
• Industry funding: Funding from companies/corporations is quite common in some areas of academia, such as in engineering. It tends to be less common in HDFS and other social/behavioral science programs. However, there are times when HDFS faculty may receive industry funding, for instance, from educational materials companies, from companies that develop health-related apps, or from food industries for nutrition researchers.

 
What’s the difference between a grant and a contract? It has taken me some time to determine the difference, but I found this chart from University of Pittsburgh very helpful:

[Source: http://www.research.pitt.edu/fcs-basics-federal-contracting#GrantvsContract]
 
In summary, grants are often investigator-initiated – you develop the research question. Contracts are often agency-initiated – they ask you to answer a specific question they want addressed, such as the efficacy of an existing program, or what are the effects of substance use among military personnel on their families. You have more flexibility and freedom with grants, both in terms of what you pursue, but also the ability to make changes (e.g., new constructs, new measures), less frequent reporting, and fewer restrictions on when you release your findings.
  
“Common sources of external funding for faculty/research associates first appeared on Eva Lefkowitz’s blog on June 27, 2019.”

In my professional development seminar, we have a week on grant writing. Of course, the topic of grant writing could be (and frequently is) a course in itself, so what I cover in 2.5 hours is really only an overview and primer on thinking about grants.
 
Research grants are not only relevant to faculty; they might fit into your career at several different stages.

[I got really excited about PowerPoint’s SmartArt feature this past semester]
 
In terms of graduate students, there are a range of grants/fellowships that grad students can apply for, which I’ve covered in an earlier post, though now I have a cool new graphic.

There are also different types of postdoctoral funding, which I also covered in an earlier post.
 
In terms of grants that one might apply for at the faculty/research associate level, there are a range of sources one might pursue for grant funding. I am going to write about this topic separately, soon.
 
First, though, I want to discuss different kinds of PhD-level jobs where either grant writing is part of your expected job responsibilities, or the skills you develop during grant writing are valuable as transferable skills for that position.
 

• Tenure-track faculty positions: Probably the most obvious. If you are in a tenure track position, particularly at an R1 university, there is usually an expectation that you will pursue external funding to support your research. At other universities, depending on their research-focus and the type of department you are in, there may or may not be such an expectation. If you are at a very teaching-oriented university, you may never have to pursue external funding. But keep in mind, often there are other reasons you may need to write proposals, such as applying for a Fulbright, or even applying internally for research leave. Having training/experience in grant writing may prepare you for these tasks.
• Faculty in medical schools/soft money faculty: Many faculty at medical schools are expected to bring in their own salaries. They can do so through teaching, research grants (whether their own or time on others’ research grants), and/or clinical hours. Grant writing is an integral part of such faculty members’ positions. I know people who submit multiple proposals to every NIH funding cycle.
•  University research positions: University-based research associates and similar non-faculty positions at universities are also often on soft money. They have to bring in their own salary through their own grants or by serving as an investigator on other people’s grants. Grant writing is a critical part of such positions.
• Research institute: Individuals who work as researchers at research institutes often pursue funding to support their salary/time. It will depend on the position, and depend on the institute, but grant writing is often a large proportion of such positions.
• Government and other funding agencies: If you work at NIH or a research foundation that provides grants to others, you may not be pursuing your own external funding. However, positions at such agencies usually involve being on the other end of the process: writing calls for proposals, giving advice to investigators, reviewing proposals, and managing external research grants. Thus, having grant writing experience can be really valuable for obtaining such a position.
• Non-profit organizations/NGO’s: If you work for a non-profit organization, chances are some of their funding comes from pursuing external grants or contracts. Grant writing skills are very valuable for obtaining such a job and for succeeding once you are there.
• Industry-based careers: If you have a job at a for-profit corporation, you may not need to write grant proposals for external funding. However, a student in my seminar this past semester pointed out that often in industry, you need to write proposals to supervisors for ideas you have for projects – you are essentially asking for internal funding for your internal research or idea. Grant writing skills and experience can well prepare you for such job responsibilities.

 
I won’t argue that every job post-PhD requires grant writing skills. However, many different careers benefit from such skills, so getting these experiences early on can be highly marketable.  
  
“Jobs where grant-writing matters first appeared on Eva Lefkowitz’s blog on June 25, 2019.”

If you are considering applying to graduate school, you may not yet know much about what funding looks like during graduate school. Even if you are currently a graduate student you still may be confused about different options for funding. So I wanted to walk you through different types of funding. As always, this mainly applies to HDFS, psychology, and similar programs, with a focus on graduate programs. Other programs may differ. In addition, I’ve only ever been affiliated with 3 graduate programs (UCLA psych, Penn State HDFS, UConn HDFS), all public universities, so there may be other options at other universities that I’m unfamiliar with.

• Assistantships: The most common type of doctoral funding is through an assistantship. Usually, you work a set number of hours per week and then the assistantship covers your tuition and a stipend and usually provides access to health insurance. Usually, your assignment is as a teaching assistant, a research assistant, or a combination of the two. For some programs, teaching your own course is another option in an assistantship position. Number of hours varies; for some programs the norm is 10 hours per week of work; for others 15 or 20. Assistantship rates vary dramatically by program. In 1998 when I was admitted to developmental psych doctoral programs, one program offered me $7000 a year, and another $12000. But, when comparing assistantship rates at multiple programs, don’t just think about the dollar amount. You also need to consider the number of hours of work, and, perhaps most importantly, the cost of living. Affording rent as a UConn graduate student while living in northern Connecticut is vastly different from affording rent in Boston, for instance. You can look at UConn’s current rates as one example.
• Paid hourly labor: Some programs hire students in various roles on an hourly basis, particularly students who were not guaranteed funding. Paid labor would not cover with tuition support. Departments or faculty may hire you to grade papers, to work on a research project, to do departmental tasks, or in the case of clinical programs, to work as a clinician. Unlike an assistantship, this type of funding does not include tuition coverage. Increasingly, graduate students are becoming unionized, and in some instances, the union prevents departments from hiring students for an hourly rate.
• University fellowship at entry: Many universities have fellowships that they use as recruiting tools. These are usually either for your first year, or for 2 or more years beginning at entry to the doctoral program. Usually you will learn about this fellowship either when you are admitted, or some time before the April decision deadline. Many programs do not even require that you separately apply for such a fellowship – you learn about it after you are admitted. These fellowships usually cover your tuition and provide an (often generous) stipend and access to health insurance. Sometimes there are specific fellowships for students from underrepresented ethnic/racial groups. Here are examples from UConn.
• University dissertation fellowship: Universities often have 1-2 year fellowships. These often (not always) are specific to your last/dissertation year. Often they come from endowments – someone donated to the university to support graduate students in a specific area. They may be specific to a discipline or area of study, or may be more general. They usually cover tuition and provide a stipend and access to health insurance.
• University scholarships: Here, I distinguish between fellowships, which cover tuition and a (hopefully) livable stipend, and scholarships, which are a lump sum but do not include tuition. Note that some awards are named fellowships but do not include tuition. Many universities have these smaller scholarships, at the department, college, or university level. They may offer anywhere from a couple hundred to several thousand dollars. They may be very specific to an area of research, for any dissertation research, or may have certain other criteria (e.g., service to the university). You may have to apply, or your department may have to nominate you. These rarely provide enough money that they can be your only source of funding.
• Institutional training grants: As I described in my post about post docs, this category includes T31’s from National Institutes of Health, which are relatively common in HDFS and related fields. A team of researchers at your university will have already applied for and secured the training grant. So, your application process is generally not immensely complicated, and is internal to the university. These address a specific topic (for instance, at UConn there is one on the social processes of HIV/AIDS). Support on a training grant usually involves a commitment to attend a seminar and/or speaker series, to identify multiple mentors in the area, and to commit to research on that topic for a 2-year period. Depending on the training grant directors, they sometimes involve a stipulation that you cannot do research assistant tasks but instead must be involved in more independent research processes like analyses and writing for your own work. They usually come with a fair bit of professional development training – activities such as support for writing papers, support for writing and submitting grants, and support for going on the job market/applying for post docs. When the PI’s apply to renew the T32, they usually have to report on the current status of all of their alumni, which makes the team of mentors highly invested in their fellows’ success.
• External Individual training grants: The most common one related to HDFS (and psychology) is the F31 from NIH. It requires that you put together a training plan – not only the research you plan to do, but all aspects of training. How do you plan to train to be the scholar you want to be by the end of the plan? It may include, for instance, mentoring in fMRI if your dissertation will require techniques you have not yet used. It might include specific advanced methodology courses. The training plan should include a lot of detail on your activities, not only your specific research study. F31s are generally very involved applications to write, and then provide stipend and tuition for 2+ years of doctoral study. 
• External fellowships: These include a huge range of possible fellowships. Perhaps the best known (and funded!) is from NSF, which provides 3 years of generous support for students from a range of disciplines. Students generally apply in their second year of graduate school. It may cover one year, or multiple years.
• External scholarships: To be clear, a lot of these programs actually call themselves fellowships, but I’m using the term scholarship to indicate that they do not cover tuition. Some universities will provide a tuition grant when students receive this type of funding. Sometimes the stipend amount is generous enough that you can cover tuition and still have enough for living expenses. Sometimes it is only a couple thousand dollars (which can still help, just isn’t enough to support you). These are often one year, frequently the dissertation year. They may be general to social science, they may cover a specific topic, may require membership in a specific organization, or they may be for a specific group of scholars, e.g., women, underrepresented ethnic/racial minorities, individuals from a specific country, etc. Sometimes they may specifically provide support for international travel or research outside of your university’s country, either generally, like the Fulbright, or to a specific country. Sometimes universities will let you have an assistantship and this type of external funding – and other times not. So it’s important to check with your university if the amount will not be enough for you to support yourself.
• External grants: Rather than providing money to the individual per se, grants cover funding for a specific project. Applying often involves a budget, and the funds should be used to cover research expenses, such as travel, data collection, and/or data analysis. More so than other external sources, they very frequently involve a particular discipline or topic.
• Dissertation completion fellowship at other institution: Increasingly, I’ve noticed specific universities offering support for dissertation year funding for students from other universities to be in residence at their university. Sometimes this arrangement involves some teaching, other times not. It seems more common, though not limited to, smaller, prestigious liberal arts colleges that do not have doctoral programs. Often, they involve the potential for future employment by the university. These fellowships frequently are specific to students from underrepresented ethnic/racial backgrounds to improve the university’s diversity long term.

 
Of course, students sometimes have jobs outside of their university. Other students work full time and attend school part time. And students sometimes take out loans to support their graduate education. Here, I focused on funding related to your graduate training.
 
What did I miss? Feel free to comment or email me if you believe I neglected another form of funding.
 
“Different types of funding during graduate school first appeared on Eva Lefkowitz’s blog on September 27, 2018.”

For the proposal I recently submitted, I needed to paste a table I made in MS Word back into Word as an image, so that I could play with its size and have text wrap around it. My first attempt was to save it as a PDF, grab it, and paste it into Word, but it was too faded/blurry. My second attempt was to save it as a PDF, save it as a JPEG, and then paste it in, but even worse. Luckily, my husband knew the easier solution:

• Highlight the whole table in Word in a separate document.
• Copy it.
• Go into the document to the point you want to place it, and in Word choose “paste special” and then choose “picture (enhanced metafile)”
• Then you can adjust it as you wish            
  

•               Adjust size: Highlight it and change size physically, or highlight it, right click, choose size & position, and then change height/width under “scale.” I did the latter because I was pasting 3 different tables and I wanted them to be identical in size.
•             Wrap text: Right click, choose “wrap text” and then choose “in line with text” if you want text to wrap around the image (less white space on the page)

This process really helped me with the formatting of the proposal.

“The post MS Word trick #2: Pasting MS Word table into Word as image first appeared on Eva Lefkowitz’s blog on June 12, 2014.”

I mentioned in a previous post that we had a grant writing marathon for 3 days in May. It was an excellent experience for me, in that my 3 students spent those 3 days basically supporting me in various grant related tasks. We had also scheduled a full week in June for paper writing. It turned out that I didn’t need to submit my proposal until late Tuesday of last week, so Monday and Tuesday were still grant writing for me (and a bit of support from my students), but otherwise, we all worked on various manuscripts (and 1 thesis). Here is the line up:

So we worked on 1 grant proposal, 1 thesis, and 8 manuscripts in various stages ranging from conceptualization, to responding to an R&R (note: fully drafted doesn’t mean it started from nothing!).

The end of the week tally was:
1 grant proposal: Submitted!
1 thesis: fully drafted and in my inbox
2 papers: analyses finalized and partially drafted
2 papers: revision & accompanying letter fully drafted and feedback given
3 papers: fully drafted & feedback given
1 paper: analyses run but more to go

If I hadn’t spent so much time on the grant proposal (both during our group time and late each night), I’m sure I could have accomplished more than I did on the paper I’m primary author on, though I did make some progress there. However, my biggest accomplishments of the week (other than, did I mention, the grant proposal?) was giving feedback to students and other co-authors on 4 papers, and meeting with students about other papers.

Overall we were generally happy with the week. It generated a fair bit of conversation in the department as people came by to see what we were up to. And we all agreed that when my lab space is next door to my office in our future building we are going to be more productive together (drop the lag time between sending emails and replying to them). The verdict was mixed on whether 5 days was the ideal – some people thought it was too long, and others liked it and were ready to schedule the next marathon. We may try for mini-marathons – either one day, or paper specific or both – in the next couple of summer months.

Couple of other observations – one of my students fashioned herself a standing desk and seemed to really like that. We had snacks every day and went out to lunch on Friday which helped morale, though morale likely would have been higher if, like Cindy Berg, we had a better setting than a window-less conference room.

But generally, we all really liked being near each other, and all engaged in the writing process. The collaboration was excellent, too, knowing we were involved in similar activities and able to check in with each other throughout the day.

Have you ever tried something similar? What worked about it and what would you change?

“Writing marathon first appeared on Eva Lefkowitz’s blog on June 9, 2014.”

Last week we had our grant writing marathon. On the final day, my 3 students each read a 20 page, single spaced (0.5 inch margin!) document to give feedback. The feedback totaled about 900 revisions. One student suggested creating a google doc to work from simultaneously, but I worried about working on sections at the same time, and about loss of formatting in the conversion.

Nervously, I went with merging track changes and comments in Word. It mostly worked, creating one document with everyone’s comments combined. You can find details about how to do it here.

In brief:

·         Choose compare from the Review tab

·         Choose combine revisions from multiple authors

·         Choose an original and a revised version

·         You can choose what you do and do not want to compare/merge, and how to do it

·         Repeat as many times as necessary depending on how many people worked on the document

I ended up with one document that had everyone’s tracked changes, plus everyone’s comments, in one place. Magic.

I would do one thing differently. I didn’t learn until I had everyone’s feedback that Word will not merge formatting edits from multiple documents, so it lost everyone’s formatting edits. It wasn’t a huge deal, because we weren’t doing careful formatting reads this time (e.g., fixing indents, fixing bold vs. underline). However, if I did it again, I would ask all readers not to make any formatting changes, but instead, to make comments as to where they thought formatting changes should be made (e.g., highlight text and write in comment “should be bold.”).

Either way, much better than trying to go through 900 revisions across 3 documents. Thank you everyone!

“The post Word trick #1: Merging tracked changes and comments first appeared on Eva Lefkowitz’s blog on May 29, 2014.”

My students and I had a 3-day grant writing marathon. It’s the first time I’ve ever done something like it, and I’m a total convert and want to convince the rest of the world how fabulous it is.

I got the idea from Cindy Berg, who holds an annual writing retreat with her research group. Toward the end of Spring semester this year, my students and I scheduled a 3-day period and a 5-day period. 

I recently decided to aim for a June 5 instead of an October 5 grant writing deadline. I had been thinking, October 5! Then I have the whole summer to write this proposal. But I hate writing grant proposals. It is a huge writer’s block issue for me, and I have been working on the same proposal for way longer than I will admit in writing. So I finally had an aha! moment where I realized that if I aim for October 5, then I actually have the whole summer NOT to write the proposal, while the proposal gets in the way of all of my other writing. So I committed to June 5, with the goal that it is out at the start of the summer, and then I have the rest of the summer for paper writing. The other advantage of June 5 is that after classes end, May often disappears and I don’t really know what I accomplished, so the proposal becomes a clear May accomplishment.

My three current students and I blocked off Monday – Wednesday, 9:00 AM – 4:00 PM of last week for proposal writing. I crammed all of my meetings for that week into Thursday (Fridays I generally don’t come into the office) and we claimed the conference room across the hall from my office (my lab space is 2 flights away from my office, not ideal for interactive collaboration).

It’s hard to convey how well this process worked for me/us. We certainly didn’t start from scratch, so I’m not saying that we wrote a whole proposal start to finish in 3 days. I had drafts of most sections by the start of Monday, in part with help from the students and some other collaborators prior to the scheduled days. On Monday and Tuesday, I mostly assigned people specific tasks related to holes in the proposal, e.g.: write a couple of specific paragraphs/sentences to beef up some sections; find literature to support specific points; work on the reference list; add details on measures or find new measures to address certain points; find relevant program announcements; fill out the enrollment chart; run frequencies on specific variables to add to proposal; take a first pass at some supporting sections, like resource plan or budget justification, so that I had a start or outline to work with.

On Wednesday morning, I sent around the full draft for everyone to read. Everyone sent feedback by the end of the day. Wednesday night I read through all of the feedback (about 900 revisions in the 20 or so pages), made edits, and then sent some final follow-up questions based on everyone’s feedback. Everyone had replied to me by the end of the day Thursday (technically not one of the grant writing days), and I was able to share with the other investigators for their feedback.

Reasons why I think it worked/what was great about it:

·         We all had blocked off the time to work on it. Perhaps it goes without saying that blocking off the time means that we all concentrated on the proposal and not other tasks in our lives. This distinction was huge for me, because I tend to reply to things immediately and drop what I’m working on to respond to things in real time. For these 3 days, I mostly ignored emails that weren’t urgent. When my department head emailed me and asked if we could talk by phone about something that day, I replied, asked if it was urgent, and said if it was not urgent, could we wait until the next day. We could I never, ever say things like that to people, so it was a big step for me to prioritize my own research over an administrative responsibility.

·         As I told my colleague, it was the first time in 3 years that I mostly neglected my Professor-in-Charge (PIC) duties for 3 straight days. And the world didn’t end. I did reply to a few urgent emails, but left the non-urgent tasks for Thursday and beyond. It was a good lesson to me of the value of occasionally stepping away from the tasks that are always there and never really finished.

·         Being physically together – and knowing we were all working on the same task – was important for all of us. It really reduced response time and ability to check in about things. When my students had questions for me, they could come across the hall and ask me. Because the lab is 2 flights of stairs away, they never, ever pop in with questions. They always email me, and that obviously requires some delay in response time. Instead, I could answer their questions immediately. Similarly, I could ask them questions right away; give them a new task right away; or approach the group with a conceptual question I was struggling with, rather than waiting until our next lab meeting to do so. Currently, given my office location, departmental staff I work with pop in regularly with questions related to my administrative role, and that works well. I now look forward to moving to our new building in 14 months where my lab space will be next door to my office.

·         The other advantage of being physically together is it made it harder to goof off. I didn’t want someone to walk into my office and see me surfing the web. One of my students in particular said that she really liked working with me nearby because it kept her on task and away from procrastinating, knowing I could walk in at any moment. She also said she looked forward to working near my office in the future for that very reason.

·         There were 3 students working on my tasks, and as a result, I constantly was scrambling to stay ahead of them to keep them in tasks. Someone was always popping in to say that they finished the last task, what next? That time pressure was excellent for keeping my momentum. Again, if we weren’t together with blocked off time, it would have been me, alone, slowly working through one thing, emailing it to someone, slowly working through something else, emailing it… instead, it was a constant back and forth of documents.

·         In the beginning, I really was thinking about the 3-days advantaging me and the proposal, and the students indirectly in that funding for the proposal would translate to student funding. It wasn’t until the last day that I realized the direct benefit to the students. They learned a fair bit about grant writing, what all the sections are about, what you need to highlight, how to edit it, etc. etc. By the end they said that they had learned a fair bit about proposal writing, and I think the intensity of the 3 days really made the process a better learning experience.

·         Snacks! One day a student brought in lunch for everyone. Each of the 3 days someone brought in dessert. On day 3 we needed a change of scenery so I took them out to lunch and we didn’t talk about the proposal. Food was good.

I have fabulous students, whom I genuinely like, so spending 3 days with them all day was invigorating and enjoyable. I am so grateful to all of them for dedicating this time to the proposal, and am really impressed with how much we accomplished in 3 days. I highly recommend trying something similar to anyone working on a grant proposal.

In June we have our one week paper writing marathon. Stay tuned.

“The post Grant writing marathon first appeared on Eva Lefkowitz’s blog on May 27, 2014.”

For the past 4 years, I chaired the membership committee of the Society for Research on Adolescence (SRA). One of the areas we identified as a need for growth was in terms of advice and engagement for mid-career scholars. SRA has done a fabulous job over the past few years of improving professional development guidance for emerging scholars. Could the organization start to do the same for mid-career scholars?

The membership committee organized an invited roundtable for the 2014 SRA biannual meeting in Austin, TX. We were quite excited about the participants on the panel, as well as the turnout (given that it was late in the afternoon on the last day of the conference). The panelists gave excellent advice, and the audience asked really helpful questions. I wrote a blog post for SRA summarizing the advice from the scholars (and explaining why my first attempt at live tweeting was a huge failure). You can find the post here.

I did want to mention one thing that was not brought up by any of the panelists, and that is work/life balance. At mid-career, almost everyone has responsibility to a young child, or a teenager, or an aging parent. These are not unique features of mid-career, but often mid-career represents the time that these responsibilities converge. I remember a time in my mother's life when she had an active full time job, an aging father to visit at a residential facility, a husband with a degenerative disease, and a grandson in the NICU (she was a young grandmother). This convergence isn't uncommon at this point in one's career, and it's another way in which work/life balance can be challenging. I don't have all the answers of the perfect balance (even though, as my son likes to tell people, I won "Best work/life balancer at HDFS follies last year).

Post-tenure, it's a bit easier to think long-term. If a manuscript gets submitted one week later because your child is home with the flu or because you spend a week visiting your parent in a hospital, it doesn't feel as career threatening as it might pre-tenure (though obviously, one week is rarely career threatening for anyone).
Work-life balance also involves things like exercise, healthy eating, and time with friends. I've mentioned before that I put exercise blocks on my actual calendar because if I don't, it doesn't happen. But exercise gives me more energy and makes me a generally happier person, so it improves my work/life balance. In addition to putting it on my calendar, I work it into my daily life -- I try to walk my kids to school and then myself to the office, and this week, I started trying an exercise ball in place of my chair (yes, I get many strange looks as people walk by my office). So work/life balance is sometimes about responding to things outside your control (babies who don't sleep all night long; responsibility to a parent's finances;  partner's illness), but sometimes about finding the balance you need to be a sane and happy person.

Can you do something balanced for yourself today?

“The post Professional development advice at mid-career first appeared on Eva Lefkowitz’s blog on April 9, 2014.”

As I said, information presented at the beginning and the end is more easily remembered (the primacy and recency effects). Just as you want to put effort into crafting your first sentence, you also want to carefully craft your final paragraph.

Common mistake #1: Writers often try to summarize every single finding in their final paragraph. This attempt results in a clunky concluding paragraph, that doesn’t highlight the most interesting/significant findings (it’s not possible that everything you found is equally exciting/novel, is it?), and doesn’t direct the reader’s attention appropriately.

Common mistake #2: Writers write very vague sentences that don’t really summarize anything specific reported in that particular paper (e.g., we found gender differences in sexual risk behavior).

Common mistake #3: Writers treat their findings as so revolutionary that all future research, interventions, and policy will be influenced by the findings in this one study of 100 students from one middle school (e.g., findings demonstrate that parents should avoid discussing alcohol with their middle school aged children, and that future interventions should train parents how to dictate complete abstinence from drinking in order to prevent their children from becoming early alcohol abusers).

Common mistake #4: Writers end with their limitations or future directions paragraph, rather than adding a concluding paragraph afterward. You want to include these topics in your discussion. But you don’t want to leave the readers thinking about the things you did wrong or what others should do, you want them remembering what you did. 

What should you do?

1. Summarize 1-3 specific and interesting findings that add to past research.  Think about your elevator speech. If someone asked you to tell them in a couple of sentences your most interesting findings from this paper, what would you say? Write that.

2. Be clear on the how these findings contribute to the literature – do they support or refute a prior theory? Do they have important public health implications? Do they show something novel about human behavior?

That’s it. Relatively short, clear, and memorable. Here are a few examples:

From a short article in an AMA-style journal:

“Our data suggest that the potential acceptability of the HPV vaccine is high in Argentina, given that there is acceptance among the professional community, that physicians recommend it, and that the vaccine is affordable. Special educational efforts must be undertaken to assure that physicians provide parents and women adequate, evidence-based information about the HPV vaccine.” (from Arrossi, Maceira, Paolino, & Sankaranarayanan, 2012).

A public health message:

“In conclusion, this research supported the notion that students consuming alcohol with a celebration mission reach higher levels of intoxication, thereby putting themselves at substantial risk for alcohol-related problems, including DUI. Interventions to prevent alcohol abuse on a college or university campus need to consider the impact of various celebrations. Perhaps it is possible to develop and promote alternative ways for college students to commemorate special occasions.” (from Glindemann, Wiegand, & Geller, 2007)

A developmental perspective:

“Patterning of risk behavior from late adolescence to almost 30 years of age differed depending on the type of behavior. Most risk behaviors decrease from late adolescence to young adulthood, but the age when decline begins differs. While drinking up to the point of drunkenness, smoking, cannabis use, and deviance decline during young adulthood, HIV-related sexual risk behavior still increases. This might indicate a distinct functionality compared with other risk behaviors.” (from Brodbeck, Bachmann, Croudace, & Brown, 2013)

A policy perspective:

“Beyond these limitations, however, results highlight the importance of considering housing in a multifaceted manner in order to address the underlying connections between multiple aspects of housing contexts. By assessing housing quality, stability, type, and cost in one comprehensive model, this study sought to delineate the relative contributions of these interrelated aspects of housing to children’s developmental trajectories in emotional, behavioral, and cognitive realms. Results underscore the central role of poor housing quality as potentially the most potent aspect of housing in inhibiting the healthy development of low-income children and youth, with housing problems showing the most consistent links with children’s and adolescents’ emotional and behavioral functioning, as well as with adolescents’ cognitive skills.” (from Coley, Leventhal, Lynch, & Kull, 2013)

I think that’s what I have to say about intentional writing for now. What other professional development topics would you like to see covered in the coming weeks?

“The post Intentional writing part 6: Leave them with something to remember first appeared on Eva Lefkowitz’s blog on November 20, 2013.”

My Ph.D. is in developmental psychology from UCLA, where we were required to take psychology courses from outside our area, and to choose a minor from another area. I had zero interests in cognitive psychology. But at my friend’s insistence that it would be good, I took a course in learning and memory from Bob Bjork. That class influenced me more than any other non-developmental course I took during undergrad or grad (except intro psych freshman year). I don’t remember everything from that course, but a few things have stuck with me, including:

• Retrieval is a potent learning event
  
• Memory regresses to the mean
• First and last things in a sequence are more easily remembered than the middle

I took the course about 20 years ago, so it’s possible some of these points have subsequently been disproven. But, I draw on this memory research when teaching, learning, and writing. In particular, I know that in a lecture, talk, grant proposal, or paper, people are going to remember the beginning and end more than the middle. That doesn’t mean that you should fill the middle with junk, but it does mean that you should pay particular attention to the first sentence and last paragraph of your paper.

Your first sentence (and title, and abstract) is like an advertisement – step right up! Read this great paper and learn exciting new things! You want to convince the reader that your paper will: (1) be clearly written; (2) be interesting; (3) present something important and worth the time to read. That’s a lot of pressure on a first sentence. But you should spend more time on the first sentence than any other sentence in the paper. Write a first sentence that will make people want to read more.

The most common weak 1st sentences I read are either (1) So vague that they really don’t say anything, or (2) a dull fact that may be more specific, but still doesn’t say what the paper will be about, or why I should bother reading it. The examples below are all slightly adapted from real theses or published manuscripts:

• Vague example: Emerging adulthood, the period of development between adolescence and adulthood, includes intensive identity exploration (Arnett, 2000).
• Boring example: By ages 20-24 years, 85% of women and 82% of men have had sex in their lifetime (National Health Statistics Reports, 2011). 
• Example of both: Many studies have examined risky sexual behavior among college students (LOTS OF CITES).

These are points you may want to make somewhere in your paper. And, there is nothing grammatically or stylistically incorrect about these sentences. You are likely to even get published with them. But they won’t attract your readers from the start. Recently, I wanted to give my student examples of strong first sentences. We are working on a manuscript together, and have a shared folder of articles, so I decided to browse first sentences to point out good examples to her. I was surprised to discover that the vast majority of publications in this folder on associations between alcohol use and sexual behavior had first sentences that were virtually interchangeable with each other. They almost all started with a fact about how drinking in college is dangerous; how drinking and sex are associated; or how STI’s are elevated during adolescence and young adulthood. In some instances, these facts might work for the start of a paper, but in the majority, they were relatively dull and interchangeable.

So, how should you start you start your paper?  Possibilities include:

• A question relevant to your research questions: Does fraternity involvement increase the risk of unprotected sex after alcohol consumption?
• An interesting or surprising fact related to your ideas:  Historically, fellatio or cunnilingus, hereto referred to as oral sex, were perceived among heterosexual couples as not only more intimate than intercourse but also to be reserved for those who were married (Michael, Gagnon, Laumann, & Kolata, 1994). (from Chambers, 2007)
• A theoretical/conceptual question: Alcohol use among young people tends to lead to impaired decision making and risky behavior (Kaly, Heesacker, & Frost,, 2002; MacDonald, MacDonald, Zanna, & Fong, 2000; Steele & Josephs, 1990), but adolescents and young adults themselves perceive the outcomes of alcohol use to generally be positive (Lee, Maggs, Neighbors, & Patrick, 2011; Patrick & Maggs, 2011).
• Hammer at the public health significance, if you have something beyond the fact that everyone else uses: Hospital emergency departments (ED) remain a healthcare safety net for much of the inner-city ED population.1 (from Bazargan-Hejazi et al., 2012).
• A cultural observation relevant to your paper: From “Animal House” to “American Pie,” late adolescents and young adults (usually college students) are portrayed as talking about sex in the rare moments that they are not having sex or trying to have sex. (from Lefkowitz, Boone, & Shearer, 2004).
• The same facts that everyone else is saying, but say it well: Alcohol use is widely understood to be a common part of the collegiate experience (Schulenberg & Maggs, 2002; Straus & Bacon, 1953) based on a strong cultural expectation that drinking is central to the experience of the mythically carefree college years (Maggs, 1997). (from Patrick & Maggs, 2009).

With permission, here are a couple of examples of two of my current students’ early tries at a first sentence to their thesis, and the revised version:

• RW, early version: Although many adolescents and young adults engage in sexual behavior, their experiences are not uniform.
• RW, revised:  Adolescent sexual behaviors and partnerships are important from developmental and risk-taking perspectives because the timing, sequencing, context, and patterning of sexual behaviors correspond to psychological and sexual health outcomes later in life (Haydon, Herring, Prinstein & Halpern, 2012; Sandfort, Orr, Hirsch, & Santelli, 2008). 
• EW, early version: There is growing evidence that the effects of parenting may have implications well into emerging adulthood (Abar, Carter, & Winsler, 2009; Weiss & Schwarz, 1996).
• EW, revised: There is growing evidence that the effects of parenting may have implications for individuals’ study skills, GPA, and alcohol consumption well into emerging adulthood (Abar, Carter, & Winsler, 2009; Turner, Chandler, & Heffer 2009; Weiss & Schwarz, 1996).

Notice that in both instances, they have added more specifics, and are setting the reader up to understand the details of their own papers.

Don’t worry about writing this fabulous first sentence when you first start the paper. Write something as a placeholder, and come back to it after much of the rest of the paper is written.

I seem to have said enough about first sentences to warrant postponing a discussion of concluding paragraphs for a separate post.  I’ll leave you with some of my favorite fiction introductory sentences, copied from American Book Review. Notice how they really make you want to read the next sentence.

• Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. —Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (1878)
• If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. —J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye (1951)
• I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974. —Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex (2002)
• In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since. —F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925)
• High, high above the North Pole, on the first day of 1969, two professors of English Literature approached each other at a combined velocity of 1200 miles per hour. —David Lodge, Changing Places (1975)

“The post Intentional writing part 5: Start and end strong first appeared on Eva Lefkowitz’s blog on November 18, 2013.”