I would be interested in participating and in the results.

Sarah B. Dumais . Sponsored Programs Specialist . Office of Sponsored Programs
1400 18th Avenue South . Sony Building . 3rd Floor
Phone: 615-322-3979 . Fax: 615-343-2447

-----Original Message-----
From: Research Administration List [mailto:xxxxxx@lists.healthresearch.org] On Behalf Of Chris Thompson
Sent: Friday, June 13, 2014 9:36 AM
To: xxxxxx@lists.healthresearch.org
Subject: [RESADM-L] Proposal Complexity

A few months ago I offered to work on creating a matrix for proposal complexity, unfortunately  I ran into a bit of a wall as two different metrics sprung from the effort.  The first was the original thought related to how complicated is the proposal itself and therefore how long will it take to develop and how much help will investigators need, a leading indicator.  The second came up later and was related to determining staff burden and effectiveness, more of a trailing indicator.  The two had very different processes as the latter assumes you have all the information because the proposal is complete and the former is a best guess at any given time and changes as more data is collected.  I tried to meet both needs with the information people provided but I just couldn't get there because we hadn't asked the right questions initially and as the questions we had were answered more factors were provided.  I'm going to take another crack at this and please let me know if you feel the plan is off target.  Here are the steps in mind right now;

1.  Create a new survey  to collect as complete a list of the complexity factors as possible (we start with a list of 37 factors thanks to everyone's input to date) 2.  Identify if the factors are related to complexity for development or staff burden in the survey 3.  Collect information about conditions that make factors not applicable in certain cases (ex. "we don't do animal research") 4.  Collect ideas about how to generate the score itself. Do we start from 0 as was the original plan or start from 100 and lower the score as more details are provided as someone else suggested (which I think might be a better idea) 5.  Create another survey based on 1,2,3 and 4 6.  Generate a calculation in an excel format and share it with the list 7.  Create a final survey to collect comments and improvements on calculation 8.  Release the final calculation in excel format 9.  Go on vacation!

Thanks again for everyone's help.

-Chris

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======================================================================
 Instructions on how to use the RESADM-L Mailing List, including
 subscription information and a web-searchable archive, are available
 via our web site at http://www.healthresearch.org (click on the
 "LISTSERV" link in the upper right corner)

 A link directly to helpful tips:  http://tinyurl.com/resadm-l-help
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