Who is writing the proposals?
PI position: e.g. postdoc, assist. Prof, assoc. Prof, tenured faculty, research faculty, Gender, race/ethnicity, geographical location, size of institution
How many proposals submitted by same PI - broken down by PI category
Number of senior researchers on proposal
Compare success rates of different sorts of proposals
per PI category, per number of senior researchers, per number of proposals submitted in the last 5 years, per funding requested
Years between proposals
Do younger researchers rise through the ranks (are researcher on proposal and then become PI later)?
Nature of community support questions
What number or fraction of the community is supported by research projects/missions?
What number or fraction of the community is support by institutions?
What number or fraction of the community can or does serve as PI?
What number or fraction of the community is part of a smaller groups (1-3) vs larger groups?
Are there other sources of scientific support for the community?
How much of the science support for the community comes through missions or other stable sources relative to competed 3-year proposals?
What fraction of the money for competed research is distributed to various types of institution (labs, universities, centers, industry)?
Individual support questions
How many grants of typical size are required to support an individual investigator?
How many sources of support does the typical investigator (PI, CoI, student) rely upon?
How many investigators/students participate in the average proposal?
Career questions
How many awards have gone to first-time PIs?
How much of the typical award supports the PI? CoIs? Students?
What is the age (in career) distribution of PIs? Proposers?
What is the age (in career) distribution of the relevant community?
Competition Questions
What is the boundary between acceptable and unacceptable success rates?
What factors determine what the acceptable boundary is? (program staff, reviewers, community, fairness, etc.)
Does the success rate/number of proposals make any difference in program allocations by agencies?
Question for Program Managers
How many proposals have been reviewed annually for the last 10 years?
How many proposals have been selected annually for the last 10 year?
How much money has been awarded annually in the last 10 years for competed research grants?
What fraction of the total program budget each year has gone to support competed grants?
Questions about Impact on People
What anecdotal evidence do we have about the impact of funding rates?
What quantitative information can we find about people entering or leaving the field?
What are the off-ramps (retirement, leaving the field, working part time, etc.) for each discipline and how many are using them?
What are the on-ramps (students, from other fields, shifting research focus, etc.) for each discipline and how many are using them?