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Learning from Call 3 of CARDI's research grants programme

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Date published: 
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
News source: 
CARDI - Paul McGill
Region: 
Republic of Ireland
Northern Ireland
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CARDI recently announced the winners of Call 3 of its grants programme. CARDI's Strategic Research Officer, Paul McGill outlines some key learnings from Call 3 of CARDI's research grants programme:

"CARDI’s Call 3 research grants programme was hugely over-subscribed with a large number of high quality applications. Our limited funding budget restricted us to four awards when we could happily have funded many more than that.

The pre-support phase meant that applicants were assisted in meeting the criteria. Overall the ‘quality’ criterion was the largest distinguishing factor between the strongest applications and the least persuasive.
Successful applications had clear aims and objectives, whereas some unsuccessful applicants were weak on this point (eg a few stated things like ‘run a focus group’ as objectives when they are actually tasks). Aims and objectives give focus to a research project and make clear to the grant panel what the applicant hopes to achieve.
Another feature of successful applications is that they had sound and achievable methodologies – meeting the ‘value for money’ criterion without danger of being unachievable within the timescale and budget. They were also rigorous and original, with a good prospect of adding to the body of knowledge in ageing research. Finally the outputs of the project were clear and achievable.
After overall quality, the next highest difference between the strongest and weakest applications was relevance to policy and practice. The funded projects in particular indicated how their research was relevant to current concerns in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland and how they might help policy-makers, practitioners and service providers to meet the needs of older people in coming years.
Funded projects were distinguished by partnerships that were both fruitful and appropriate for the research being carried out and demonstrated the strength of cross-border and interdisciplinary networks.
A point of interest, despite being a criterion in all three Calls, the involvement and engagement of older people remains a challenging area for many researchers. With the growing focus on involving older people in ageing research it seems clear that some researchers in ageing need more assistance with how best to give older people an active role in research affecting them."
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