Your Specific Aims page is crucial to the success of your proposal. So it’s important that you nail it! That’s what this workbook is for.

The general rule with your Aims page is to move from broad to specific. You want to make sure that your reviewers grasp the context and the significance of your project before you dive into the nitty-gritty. (And to be honest there’s not much space for nitty-gritty on the aims page, so you need to keep it fairly high-level.) That means starting with the Problem, Gap, and Hook before diving into your objectives and aims. (Don’t worry, I’ll explain everything)

Make sure you understand the goals of each of the sections of your Aims page. You can watch the accompanying video so you know what I mean.

<center><h1>Section One: Introduction</h1></center>

##### DEFINE THE PROBLEM

Focus on where your field is stuck - scientifically or clinically. In other words, what’s the barrier to progress? Make sure that you describe the problem in a way that’s relevant and consequential to your audience. You should also describe the problem as something broader in scope than your current project proposal—it’s your program of research for the next several funding cycles. Solving this problem is your long-term goal (see the next section).

Pro Tip 1: Generally speaking it’s wise to consider framing the problem for a general educated audience rather than an audience of sub-specialists (i.e., better to assume total ignorance and infinite intelligence than assume the problem is self-evident).

Pro Tip 2: Dive in to the specific problem as soon as possible - don’t waste time and space explaining the prevalence or incidence of disease, the annual costs, etc. unless it’s relevant to your research question. You must make the link to human health, but it’s usually better to do this in the hook - describing the stakes/consequences/possibilities for human health if the gap is filled. (Hang in there…we’re getting to that)

Pro Tip 3: Hyperbole never works here, but enthusiasm sure does. The best introductions convey your interest and excitement about the topic, the problem, and the ongoing conversation with your colleagues in the scientific literature. You’re bringing your audience up to speed on what’s going on in your world, and it’s perfectly alright to nerd out about it (without getting mired in the details, of course…see Pro Tip 1.)

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##### IDENTIFY THE GAP

Now you need to explain why there’s a barrier to progress. Typically this is a gap in knowledge (we don’t know enough about X) or a gap in thinking (we’ve been thinking about X all wrong). What do we already know, and what don’t we know yet? This is where you draw on the conversation in the literature: what have other groups tried before, and why hasn’t it worked? Is there a disagreement in your field about how something is characterized? Filling the gap is the objective of your current project (see next step).

Pro Tip 4: You must describe the gap in a way that makes your study the obvious next step. But beware - the gap is not your research question! It’s the precursor to your research question: it justifies the existence of your question (and your study).

Pro Tip 5: Don’t characterize the gap as the absence of a specific kind of study (one that you happen to be proposing!) - this is a circular argument and will not be persuasive to your reviewers (also: yuck. This comes across as slimy). Instead, make sure you’re drawing on the literature to explain why previous efforts (yours or others) have fallen short, or what kind of evidence is missing. This sets you up perfectly to propose a study that picks up where others have left off, or that uses a new technique/approach to fill the gap in knowledge or thinking to ultimately solve the problem.

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##### PERSUADE WITH THE HOOK

What are the stakes? How will filling the gap allow the field to move forward? Why is now the time to fill the gap? What has changed or shifted so that filling the gap is possible? Why might a new approach work? And what are the consequences of not filling the gap?

Pro Tip 6: The hook needs to matter to your audience. For the problem, gap, and hook to come together, you need to accomplish these points: 1) your problem must matter to your audience; 2) your audience must believe that the gap a) is actually gap (do they agree?), b) that filling the gap will make a difference, and c) that the new circumstances/tools/approaches that create an opening to solve the gap are real and viable.

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<center><h1>Section Two : Objectives</h1></center>

##### LONG-TERM GOAL ( YOUR PROGRAM OF RESEARCH )

After you’ve described the problem, gap, and hook, you want to make sure that your reviewers have a sense of the trajectory of your research. So you need to position your current application in the broader context of your work. Your long-term goal is to solve the problem you described in Section One.

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##### SHORT-TERM GOAL/MAIN OBJECTIVE ( OF THIS PROJECT )

Once you’ve described your long-term goal, you can then describe your short-term goal or overall objective, which is specific to this application. Your objective is to fill the gap (in knowledge or thinking) you described in Section One.

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##### CENTRAL/GENERAL HYPOTHESIS ( IF APPLICABLE )

Your central or general hypothesis is your best guess about how to meet your project’s objective. So if the overall objective of your project is to fill a gap in knowledge (let’s say, to figure out how something works), your general hypothesis would be: “we think this is how it works.” And then you can go about testing your hypothesis ( via your Specific Aims…that’s next )

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##### JUSTIFICATION FOR GENERAL HYPOTHESIS ( IF APPLICABLE )

You need to (briefly) explain how you arrived at your general hypothesis. Usually you’ll provide justification in the form of preliminary data (this is essential for most NIH R-series applications). Your justification can also be bolstered by other published evidence, but it’s crucial to point to your preliminary data here. (Your justification can either precede or follow your general hypothesis—play with it to figure out what sounds better).

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<center><h1>Section Three : Specific Aims</h1></center>

##### A few quick points about your Specific Aims :

- Think about your aims in the context of the funding opportunity to which you’re applying: how feasible is it to accomplish these aims during the term of the grant? (Between 2 and 5 years, depending on the funding opportunity). What would be a reasonable number of aims to accomplish during the project?
- Your aims are the steps you’ll take to achieve your short-term (project) objective. This will look a little bit different in hypothesis-driven and non-hypothesis-driven proposals.
- Aims should be described as actions or activities. Use verbs when writing your aims.
- Each Aim should be on a separate line.

##### Hypothesis-driven proposals

- Your aims are the steps you’ll take to test your general hypothesis. Your general hypothesis should therefore be broad enough that it has “parts” that can be tested via specific aims.
- Your general hypothesis should be broad enough to act as the umbrella for your specific aims, and each of your aims should feed into the general hypothesis.
- Since each of your aims is testing a part of the general hypothesis, each aim can have an aim-specific hypothesis to guide the activities under the aim.
- Your aims must relate to each other, but no one aim should depend on the outcome of another aim
- Non-hypothesis-driven proposals - Your aims are the steps you’ll take to achieve your overall project objective.

##### SPECIFIC AIM 1 ( + HYPOTHESIS )

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##### SPECIFIC AIM 2 ( + HYPOTHESIS )

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##### SPECIFIC AIM 3 ( + HYPOTHESIS )

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##### SUMMARY OF APPROACH

There won’t be a lot of space to describe the approach to each of your aims in detail, so what I recommend is that you provide a summary of your approach after you’ve described the aims (and their hypotheses, if applicable). Describe your big-picture approach to the project and the general activities you’ll undertake. You can refer to each aim in parentheses next to the relevant activity.

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<center><h1>Section Four : Outcomes</h1></center>

Until now we’ve been moving from broad to specific (Providing context, then stating goals, then describing aims). But the final section of the aims page requires us to zoom out a bit and help the reviewers understand the significance of your work in context. This is where we get to the Solution part of the Problem-Gap-Hook-Solution framework and describe how this project will contribute to finding a solution to the larger problem we described in the first section. We do that first by explaining what success looks like. The point here is to end on a high note.

##### EXPECTED OUTCOMES

If you successfully complete your project (which you must pretty much guarantee), what are the outcomes you expect? You should think of these outcomes in terms of the ‘products’ of each of your individual aims AND the overall ‘product’—which should tie back to the gap you described in Section One. These are the direct outputs of your work, not your work’s potential.

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##### POTENTIAL IMPACT AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS

Here’s where you get to (modestly, non-hyperbolically) talk about the potential impact of your work and what comes next. Remember your trajectory as a researcher: here’s where to describe it. If this project is the next step in solving the big, thorny scientific problem from Section One, what comes after that? What will you do after you successfully complete this project?

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##### RELATIONSHIP TO MISSION OF NIH INSTITUTE OR CENTER (IC)

Remember that you’re requesting funds from a specific IC. You need to spell out how the outcomes of your project will advance that IC’s mission.

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<center><h1>Pulling it all together</h1></center>

Here’s how all the pieces fit together. On the next page you’ll see how it would all come together in a one-page Specific Aims format—obviously yours might look a bit different; this is meant as a visual guide to give you a sense of how much space you have for each section (which is not a lot!). Find successful samples of Specific Aims pages from your colleagues to see how this looks in the real world. Remember: there’s more than one way to bake a cake. This approach and template will help you get there as quickly (and successfully) as possible. But it’s up to you to play around with your aims page so that it reads well and tells your story.

<img src="https://images.34353.org/1747601489370-953313207.jpeg" alt="image-20250518165127807" style="zoom:67%;" />

- Your long-term goal is to solve the scientific or clinical problem.
- Your project objective (the purpose of your application) is to fill the gap. It’s the first step to meet your long-term goal.
- Your hook describes what becomes possible when the gap is filled - it removes a barrier and lets you move forward to fill the next gap.
- Your general hypothesis is what you test to meet your project objective.
- Your specific aims test parts of your general hypothesis (they are INDEPENDENT from each other).
- Your aims, separately and together, have expected outcomes.
- Those outcomes should meet your project objective.

<center><h1>SPECIFIC AIMS</h1></center>

Big, thorny scientific or clinical PROBLEM: __________________________________. What we know about the problem: __________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ ___________________. What we don’t know (GAP):___________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ ____. What filling the gap would allow us to do (HOOK):__________________________.

Our long-term goal is to_____________________________________________. The main objective of this project is to:_______________________________________ _____________________________________. In prior/preliminary studies, we found_ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ ______. Based on this prior work, the general hypothesis driving this project is __________. We will test the general hypothesis via the following specific aims:

Aim 1: (Verb) _____________________________________________________. Based on preliminary data, our Aim 1 hypothesis is______________________________ ______________________________________________.

Aim 2: (Verb) _____________________________________________________. Based on preliminary data, our hypothesis is__________________________________ ______________________________________________.

Aim 3: (Verb) _____________________________________________________. Based on preliminary data, our hypothesis is_________________________________ ______________________________________________.

To achieve these aims we will (summary of approach): ____________________________ ____________________________________. We will accomplish this by (activities): __________________________________________________________________ ___________________________ (Aim1), _________________________ (Aim 2), and ___________________________________________ (Aim 3).

At the successful completion of the proposed research, our expected outcomes are________ _________________________________________________. These results will provide a strong basis for further/future development of _____________, which has the potential to (ultimately solve the problem). This research aligns with (NIH Institute or Center’s) mission to __________________________________________________________ by_____________________________ __________________________________.