Indicators of successful submissions to the law and social science program of the national science foundation

Law & Society Review, 1998 by Hosch, Harmon M, Oliveri, Matthew W

This article examines the overall success of 1,428 proposals submitted to the National Science Foundation's Law and Social Science Program between 1986 and 1997. On average, proposals were successful 30% of the time. The research examined a number of variables that might have influenced the success rate. The type of institution in which the Principal Investigator (PI) was employed and from which the proposal was submitted, the number of years since the PI had earned his or her Ph.D., and membership in the Law and Society Association at the time the proposal was submitted were significant factors. Variables that were not predictive of success included membership in the American Psychology-Law Society, the gender of the PI, and the type of institution from which the PI earned his or her terminal degree. Finally, persistence is a valuable strategy; proposals resubmitted for consideration after having been declined were more likely to be funded.

Earning extramural funding to support research and scholarship is a concern for the majority of scholars. It is of particular concern for social scientists when institutional budgets have many competing demands so that intramural support for research is decreasing. Yet, earning extramural grant support is an arduous task, and the factors that predict success in earning grants remain obscure. This Research Note examines the overall success of 1,428 proposals submitted to the National Science Foundation's Law and Social Science Program (LSSP) between 1986 and 1997. The results should be of interest to readers of the Law & Society Review because research funded by the program often appears in the pages of the Review.

Although there is an extensive literature examining the factors determining the success of research funding as part of the reward system and scholarly consensus in science (Cole & Cole 1978; Cole 1981; see generally Cole 1991 and literature cited there), less empirical analysis has focused on the funding of social-scientific research. Some authors have explored the priorities federal funding agencies have given to research in health and social sciences (Adair 1980; Pincus & Fine 1992). Others focus on the gap between scientists' aspiration to do research and the low funding rates they must overcome (Kalucy 1983). In addition, some authors have given advice they believe will improve written applications for funding and thus enhance the likelihood of success (Rush, Gullion, & Prien 1996).

Of studies that have explored the factors predicting success in earning extramural funding, six specifically address success in various social science programs of the National Science Foundation (Intermaggio & Ing 1989; Mastriani & Plattner 1997; Plattner, Aronson, & Abellera, 1993; Plattner, Hamilton, & Madden 1987; Plattner & McIntyre 1991; Ploch 1978). Plattner et al. (1987, 1993) and Mastriani and Plattner (1997) found a 26-28.5% overall success rate for proposals submitted to the NSF Anthropology Program between 1980 and 1995, although the rate varied considerably, with a rate as low as 13% in some years and one as high as 42% in others. The authors were unable to identify predictors of success other than full professor status. Neither the elite status of the Ph.D.-granting institution of the investigator, the elite status of the employing institution, nor gender were generally predictive. In the Sociology Program, Ploch (1978) identified publication in the American Journal of Sociology and the American Sociological Review during the five years prior to the NSF submission and the prestige of the PI's current institution to be predictive of success in earning funding. These effects were small, accounting for only about 1 % each of the variability in success. Intermaggio and Ing (1989) reported that 20% of the 593 proposals submitted to Social Psychology between 1982 and 1987 were funded. The rate varied between a high of 27% to a low of 14%. Like Plattner et al., Intermaggio and Ing were unable to identify statistically significant differences in funding rate based on gender or status of Ph.D.-granting institution; they did find significant differential success for proposals from scholars in more distinguished departments.

This Research Note focuses on the success rate for the Law and Social Sciences Program (LSSP), and the research on which it is based was designed to explore the factors that predict success in LSSP at NSF.

Law and Social Science Program

The LSSP has as its mandate to support social-scientific studies of law and law-like systems of rules. Research that advances our understanding of the impact of law on human behavior, the dynamics of legal decisionmaking, how changes in institutions or belief systems influence national legal systems, and those empirical investigations that promise to advance our understanding of sociolegal processes are supported. This very broad mandate provides the opportunity to support the research of sociolegal scholars from a variety of disciplines using a multitude of research methods.