Social and Behavioral Sciences | Office of Research Administration Newsletter

Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) W911NF-18-S-0001 for the Foundational Science Research Unit of the U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences (ARI) solicits new proposals for its fiscal year 2018 program of basic research in behavioral science. The U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences is the Army lead agency for the conduct of research, development, and analyses for the improvement of Army readiness and performance via research advances and applications of the behavioral and social sciences that address personnel, organization, training, and leader development issues. The basic research program supports research projects that are designed to expand fundamental knowledge and discover general principles in behavioral and social sciences.

A key consideration in the decision to support a research proposal is that its findings are likely to stimulate new, basic behavioral research which, in turn, will lead to improved performance of Army personnel and their units. Proposals may address both traditional behavioral issues as well as psychophysiological (to include neuroscience) and network science approaches to social phenomena, memory, cognition, and personality. ARI will not support proposals through this BAA that are primarily applied research projects (e.g., human factors studies or training program evaluations) or purely focused on physiology, psychopathology, or behavioral health.

Interested offerors are encouraged to submit white papers prior to submitting proposals.

The full research announcement and application instructions for both white papers and proposals may be viewed at grants.gov under opportunity number W911NF-18-S-0001.

White paper submissions due by April 4, 2018.

Full proposal submissions due by June 15, 2018.

Research topic areas of interest include the domains listed below (see the BAA p. 8, available here, for more information):

Personnel Testing and performance
Leader Development
Organizational Effectiveness
Learning in Formal and Informal Environments
Culture

New NSF funding opportunities in social, behavioral, economic and biological sciences.

Resource Implementations for Data Intensive Research in the Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (RIDIR) NSF 18-517
1. Due 2/28/18
2. Program webpage – RIDIR
3. Synopsis: As part of NSF’s Harnessing the Data Revolution (HDR), the Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE) seeks to develop user-friendly large-scale next-generation data resources and relevant analytic techniques to advance fundamental research in SBE areas of study. Successful proposals will, within the financial resources provided by the award, construct such databases and/or relevant analytic techniques and produce a finished product that will enable new types of data-intensive research. The databases or techniques should have significant impacts, either across multiple fields or within broad disciplinary areas, by enabling new types of data-intensive research in the SBE sciences.
SOCIOLOGY PROGRAM – Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Awards (Soc-DDRI) NSF 14-604
1. Due 2/28/18
2. Program webpage – Soc-DDRI
3. Synopsis: The Sociology Program supports basic research on all forms of human social organization — societies, institutions, groups and demography — and processes of individual and institutional change. The Program encourages theoretically focused empirical investigations aimed at improving the explanation of fundamental social processes. Included is research on organizations and organizational behavior, population dynamics, social movements, social groups, labor force participation, stratification and mobility, family, social networks, socialization, gender roles, and the sociology of science and technology. The Program supports both original data collections and secondary data analysis that use the full range of quantitative and qualitative methodological tools. Theoretically grounded projects that offer methodological innovations and improvements for data collection and analysis are also welcomed…
Dimensions of Biodiversity FY2018 NSF 18-512
1. Due 2/28/18
2. Program webpage – Dimensions of Biodiversity
3. Synopsis: Despite centuries of discovery, most of our planet’s biodiversity remains unknown. The scale of the unknown diversity on Earth is especially troubling given the rapid and permanent loss of biodiversity across the globe. The goal of the Dimensions of Biodiversity campaign is to transform, by 2020, how we describe and understand the scope and role of life on Earth. This campaign promotes novel integrative approaches to fill the most substantial gaps in our understanding of the diversity of life on Earth. It takes a broad view of biodiversity, and focuses on the intersection of genetic, phylogenetic, and functional dimensions of biodiversity. Successful proposals must integrate these three dimensions to understand interactions and feedbacks among them. While this focus complements several core programs in BIO, it differs by requiring that multiple dimensions of biodiversity be addressed simultaneously, in novel ways, to understand their synergistic roles in critical ecological and evolutionary processes, especially pertaining to the mechanisms driving the origin, maintenance, and functional roles of biodiversity.