• Presentation by Ted Von Hippel on the article and its survey. Linked at RESOURCES
• Discussion: See below for a list of possible survey questions
• Moving forward with Agency Statistics and Analysis.

The Longer report on Proposal Pressures that was not in finished form by the March 2015 AAAC report, may be a good place to start - what are the questions not yet answered, what additional information is required to make a case.

• Next Teleconference - AOB

 Your proposal has both overlap with what we asked and substantial
 additional detail that would be helpful to know.

 Courtney would probably have additional suggestions if you/we ask her.

 My only thoughts on reading through this are
 a) I would break out research staff more to include support duties
    at observatories vs. the various ranks of research faculty.  I
    would also include non-tenure track faculty.  Not only does this
    capture what could be a meaningful fraction of the respondents,
    but if people don't see their category there, they can become
    disillusioned about the survey, not answer, and that gives biased
    results.
 b) It is OK to have questions with lots of possible sub-categories,
    like your PI and co-I grant writing questions.  The way to keep
    this from taking too much time is to have it set up with drop
    down categories for the number of proposals in each category or
    a neatly formatted table where respondents can put in the number
    of proposals that they have had in each category.
 c) I suggest breaking out the formula-driven observation-support
    grants into a separate table as for many colleagues, this signal
    may overwhelm the number of standard research proposals that they
    have written.  The dollar values are often substantially less as
    well.
 d) I like the question "Is writing grant applications an explicit
    (or an unspoken but implicit) expectation for your position?" yet
    suggest it is set up so that someone could instead check "explicit",
    "implicit", or "not an expectation".  Possibly the first two
    categories could be expanded to be
    "strong explicit expectation"
    "moderate explicit expectation"
    "strong implicit expectation"
    "moderate implicit expectation"
    "not an expectation".

• How would the following actions by the funding agencies affect you?
  • Limiting applicants to one PI or CoI proposal per year:
    • would increase the time I could spend on my research
    • would reduce my chances for tenure.
    • would cause me to leave the field.
    • would reduce the number of proposals I submit.
    • would improve the quality of those proposals I submit
    • would reduce the size of my research group
  • Calling for proposals every other year
    • Etc..
  • Introducing a pre-proposal stage.
    • Etc…
  • Reducing the amount of funding for individual proposals
    • Etc..
  • Creating smaller research grants for exploratory research, with an expectation that successful proposals are likely to be funded in the following year

• Proposals to non-governmental research funds are easier to get funded (or “are available to me” )
• There are too many scientists in the field of astrophysics and the low success rate is an appropriate method of population control

• If my proposal is rejected, (choose one answer that best represents your action)
  • I resubmit the same proposal the next year
  • I submit a different type of proposal the next year
  • I support my research on someone else's grant
  • I submit a similar proposal to a different federal funding source
  • I submit a similar proposal to a private funding source
  • I concentrate on other aspects of my job (e.g. teaching)