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2025 Research Funding Announcement



The NIA Stress Measurement Network is pleased to announce its 2025 call for research projects.

 

Proposal due date: March 7, 2025

Decisions made: April 1, 2025

Funding ranges: Two levels: small/pilot projects $10k - $15k; intervention studies $30k-50k

 

Summary: The goal of the Stress Measurement Network is to promote better theory and measurement of psychosocial stress in large-scale population-based studies, and to study and identify interventions that reduce stress. Uncovering when and how psychosocial stress influences mental and physical health has been challenging in part because of the complexity of measuring and modifying stress.  With advances in technology, the potential to measure psychosocial stress has never been greater yet there is little agreement on best practices to measure stress that would optimize precision in predicting health outcomes. Identifying high quality stress measurement tools in population-based studies will allow researchers to test hypotheses about how stress influences health. We are also interested in innovative interventions that can modify chronic stress.

 

There are two levels of funding: a smaller project scope with budgets between 10k-15k that are intended for pilot projects or analyses of existing data. The larger projects with budgets between 30-50k are expected to be more ambitious and likely include either new data collection focusing on stress management experiments/interventions or adding substantively to an ongoing study. We likely will be funding 3-4 smaller projects and possibly only 1 or 2 of the larger projects. Depending on scope, projects can be analyses of data already collected/secondary analyses, adding measures to an existing study, or running a pilot study on a high risk but novel idea.

 

Key Questions: Applicants are welcome to submit proposals that are consistent with the overall aims identified above. We do, however, have specific questions that we are targeting. Proposals that make direct connections to some of these broader areas may have a funding advantage:

 

Experiments/Interventions

1.    Developing precision stress modification approaches: using the SOBC model (science of behavioral change) testing the effectiveness of novel/innovative stress reduction approaches.

 

Developing stress measures

2.    Comparisons across different cultures and geographical regions

3.    Leveraging natural language processing/LLM 

4.    Investigating passive measures of stress

 

Requirements for proposal:  Applicants should send a five-page proposal, single-spaced (excluding references), that includes: A. specific aims, B. brief literature review, C. description of study (methods/approach) and D. analytic plan. Indicate which level of funding you are targeting. Specifically, identify the key stress measurement question you are addressing, the type of data that will be used to examine the question and the important theoretical/practical gaps these data will fill. Include specific hypotheses.

 

On a separate page include an itemized budget incorporating a breakdown of the project expenses and how the funds will be used. Finally, include a paragraph describing how this pilot grant will further stress measurement and/or intervention and likely lead to a larger research grant.

 

Please submit your proposal on or before the due date to Yoobin Park (Yoobin.park@ucsf.edu). Questions regarding proposal scope can be directed to either Wendy Mendes (wendyberry.mendes@yale.edu) or Aric Prather (aric.prather@ucsf.edu).

 

Final Reports: A requirement of accepting these pilot funds is that you write a report on the findings from your study in a brief-report format, which we will send you with the award notice. Final reports will be due April 1, 2026, and will be posted on our Network website (for findings that will be published, we will wait to post the results until after paper acceptance). Reports will include a description of the question pursued, methods employed, and data and results from the study along with general conclusions. If publication of the data are not pursued then the report will be included on the Stress network depository website.

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