Proposals may be submitted by public or private nonprofit organizations in the United States, such as universities, colleges, hospitals, laboratories, or research institutions. The proposed Principal Investigator (PI) must have a doctoral degree with sufficient training and experience to accomplish the proposed work.

COMPETITION CRITERIA

All proposals will be evaluated and ranked by an independent panel of academic experts. These recommendations and evaluations will be considered by the Institute in all final selections. Proposals will be evaluated in open competition according to the following criteria:

1. Capability of the investigators
2. Intrinsic merit of the research with regard to progress in scientific understanding
3. Relevance with respect to the stated goals of the Institute
4. A realistic and rigorously developed methodology, and appropriateness of experimental design
5. Detailed knowledge of the nature of the proposed problem to be investigated, including the history and status of existing studies
6. Where feasible, (a) a collaboration between scientists and scholars of religion and ethics; and (b) inclusion of religiously significant issues; and (c) if the project involves human research subjects, inclusion of subjects representing faith traditions (e.g., a study on organ donation could easily include attention to motivations among religious donors; a study on adolescent development and altruistic activities could easily include attention to the role of spirituality and religion); and (d) if the study focuses on volunteerism in organizations, inclusion of faith-based groups
7. Cost considerations include: adequacy of the proposed resources; budgets that make maximum use of time, resources, and institutional leverage; potential or existing joint project funding (encouraged but not required)
8. A clear plan for submission of findings to leading scholarly journals, presentation at major academic conferences, and, where possible, the extension of published findings into significant monographs (encouraged but not required)
   

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