Introduction
The awards scheme was announced in November 2004, before SPARC had formally commenced, with the deadline for proposals for the first call being 1st May 2005. The second call was announced in October 2005 with a closing date of 1st March 2006. The announcements were made by SPARC, the research councils, scientific societies and clubs, and through networks of university research support officers. For the first call, at the request of the research community, seven briefings were given mostly to regional groupings of researchers.
Both calls emphasised the unique nature of the SPARC awards scheme. For example, the eligibility criteria meant that the scheme was open only to newcomers to ageing research and there was to be a dual emphasis on scientific excellence and capacity building. Importantly there was an expectation that the host institutions would provide significant support to award holders, especially as the awards would not provide the standard level of contribution to overheads or fEC costs (full economic costs) usually available from research council awards.
The main features of the awards scheme were:
a. to accommodate proposals from all areas of design, engineering and biology provided that they were within the remit of the funding bodies, EPSRC and BBSRC
b. to be attractive to those based in universities and other organisations recognised by EPSRC and BBSRC who wanted to become involved with ageing research but had not held an award in the ageing area as a principal investigator
c. to be open to researchers who were experienced in other fields but wanted to move into ageing as well as early-career academics who had not held any awards, and also to researchers who did not have an institutionally-funded post with their institutions, provided that if they were successful and were offered a SPARC award their institution would create such a post.
Thus the scheme was geared particularly to:
d. Newly appointed academic staff (typically within five years of their first appointment) and those who were about to be appointed, who had yet to secure a research council grant (or similar support from any other body which funds ageing research) as a principal investigator.
e. Research assistants with experience of ageing or related research (typically postdoctoral research assistants) who were either in receipt of a personal academic fellowship or for whom such support had been offered contingent upon a SPARC award or for whom an academic post was in prospect.
f. Established academic staff who had received research council or similar support as a principal or co-investigator but not for ageing or disability related research or for work in cognate areas.
Applications from small
consortia as well as individuals were encouraged, with the proviso that the eligibility criteria applied to all applicants including co-investigators
in joint proposals. It was expected that experienced researchers in the
field of ageing would provide advice and act as mentors to
newcomers and not be named as co-investigators.
Also, although
proposals must have had a predominately design, engineering, physical
science, biology or biotechnology orientation there were no conditions relating to the disciplinary backgrounds or
departmental affiliation of applicants. One of the reasons
for establishing SPARC was recognition that interest in ageing research was spread
across many disciplines and university departments and that ageing research was
enriched by the involvement of a wide range of disciplines.
Very extensive guidance was provided on the SPARC website
and through a telephone hotline to the secretariat. As questions were raised so
the web-based information was amended and ‘frequently
asked questions’ were posted. Considerable effort was taken to ensure that
university administrators did not presume that the funding rules were the same
as for conventional research grants, especially with the second call which took
place shortly after the introduction of fEC.
The main differences between the SPARC funding regime and
that of the research councils were:
·
For Call 1, which was undertaken before the research
councils introduced fEC, all costs usually acceptable to the research councils
were allowed except for overheads, which at that time amounted to 46% of salary
costs, which were not allowed.
·
For Call 2, undertaken after the introduction of fEC, full
costs were allowed, rather than 80%, including directly allocated costs subject
to these not exceeding the lesser of £20,000 or 50% of the directly incurred
costs. However, indirect costs were not allowed.
The motivations behind these rulings on overheads and
indirect costs were simply to spread the funding to more projects so that more
newcomers could benefit and to underline the nature of the SPARC projects,
which required an active partnership between SPARC and the host institutions in
developing the award holders.
Following the first call the advisory committee was invited
to comment on the quality and balance of the proposals. This led to the
identification of a number of areas of research which it was thought would be
worthwhile highlighting for the second call, but there was no intention to
discourage applications in other areas. As the full guidance for the second
call is available on the SPARC website it is not reproduced in this report.
Administration
All aspects of the awards scheme were administered completely by the SPARC secretariat drawing on advice from the research councils and others. The research councils expected the scheme to maintain the standards which they achieved and for procedures and systems to parallel those of the research councils. So the SPARC calls for proposals were announced in good time, receipt of a proposal was acknowledged quickly and the proposals handled confidentially. Each was reviewed by as many referees, probably more, than would be the case for a typical proposal to a research council, an awards panel reviewed the referees reports and deliberated on each proposal, and feedback was given to applicants, probably more extensive than is the usual case for research council projects. Only in one area did the procedures not follow those of the research councils. For SPARC proposals, applicants were not offered the opportunity to comment on referees’ reports prior to the meeting of the awards panel. Neither the resources available nor the time-scale of SPARC were sufficient to enable this.
Because the awards scheme and its systems and procedures were established very quickly it is valuable to consider the performance of the scheme in areas such as the extent to which it came to the notice of the research community, the quality of the proposals received and basic activities such as refereeing and reviewing.
Applications
The application form
required the type of information which is required by most awards scheme,
although in some areas the extent of the information requested was
reduced. For example, only summary
financial information was requested initially, and proposals were limited to
two pages plus a further page for references. However those applicants
proposing projects which were selected for funding were subsequently asked to
provide further details, especially detailed financial information. Importantly
the application form requested information about collaborators, partners and
mentors, an explanation of why SPARC support was necessary rather than standard
EPSRC or BBSRC responsive mode funding, and how the proposed research would
produce an increase in the capacity of the
The first call attracted 85 proposals of which 66 were considered by the advisory committee to be within the scope of the call. In response to the second call, 100 applications were received of which 69 were selected by the advisory committee for further consideration. The total funding requested by the applications to the two calls was £5.7m, for which about £1.25m was available.
Applicants
In terms of experience and qualifications the applicants were very broad indeed, ranging from research assistants to heads of school, as shown in Table 3.1. They were predominantly lecturers and senior lecturers but the scheme had been designed to attract research staff and was successful in attracting 20% of its applicants from these grades. Most applicants had doctorates. For purposes of comparison the relevant proportions are also given for those who eventually gained awards.
Table 3.1 Title and posts
of applicants and award holders
|
Title |
Applicants
% |
Award
Holders % |
|
Post |
Applicants
% |
Award
Holders % |
|
Mr,
Mrs, Miss, Ms |
9 |
9 |
|
Research
Assistant or Associate |
6 |
3 |
|
Dr |
75 |
71 |
|
Research
Fellow |
8 |
6 |
|
Professor |
15 |
21 |
|
Senior
or Principal Research
Fellow |
6 |
3 |
|
|
|
|
|
Lecturer |
40 |
38 |
|
|
|
|
|
Senior
or Principal Lecturer |
22 |
29 |
|
|
|
|
|
Reader |
4 |
0 |
|
|
|
|
|
Professor |
11 |
15 |
|
|
|
|
|
Head
of Department or School, Associate Dean or similar |
4 |
6 |
Note: The role and
responsibilities of lecturers and senior lecturers vary greatly between
institutions. These titles are not a good guide to levels of experience.
Institutions
Leaving aside spurious about ten spurious applications, 185 proposals came from 66 institutions. Of these, five or more applications were received from nine institutions, accounting for just over a third of the applications. For many of these institutions the proposals came from small clusters of staff who applied to both calls.
Figure 3.1 Frequency of multiple applications from institutions
Assessment of Proposals
Potential referees of proposals were identified by drawing on suggestions made by the advisory committee, through the directors’ knowledge of the field, the assistance of the research councils and systematic research in those areas where there was less familiarity. For Call 1 about 500 requests for reports were made to 260 prospective referees, for Call 2 there were 515 requests to 315 prospective referees, with a maximum of three requests to all but a handful of referees. About 25% of the requests were declined in Call 1 and 22% in Call 2. Overall 52% of the requests made for assistance with Call 1 and 42% of the requests for Call 2 resulted in referees’ reports. Between five and ten referees were approached for each proposal, but typically there were six to eight requests. Although generally straightforward, securing reports for some proposals was problematic, especially in the fields of transport, IT and vision. Medics were most likely not to respond although some were very supportive.
The number of referees’ reports for each proposal was typically 3, 4 or 5, on average about 4, although over a quarter had more than 5. Those proposals which had less than two reports available a few days before the advisory committee meeting which considered the proposals were subject to particular scrutiny by experts who were personal contacts of the directors and by several members of the advisory committee. Finally all proposals were assigned to at least two members of the advisory committee who also acted as referees and in addition led the deliberations of the committee on the proposals to which they were assigned.
The referees were asked to comment on the proposals in terms of their scientific excellence and capacity building potential, with guidance being given on issues of particular importance such as the level of institutional support. They were not asked to score proposals but were invited to recommend whether the proposal ‘should’, ’could’ or ’should not’ proceed.
The members of the committee who introduced each proposal and led the discussions summarised the referees’ reports, which were available to all committee members, and offered a view about their quality. After deliberating on each proposal the committee agreed two scores, for scientific excellence and capacity building potential. These were on a 1 to 10 scale, with 10 being viewed as outstanding in terms of scientific excellence and very substantial in terms of capacity building, and, for example, 8 indicating internationally competitive in terms of scientific excellence and of substantial benefit in terms of capacity building. A score of 7, strong on both dimensions, was set as the minimum acceptable level for a project to be supported. Following scoring of all of the proposals, the scores were ordered and then compared and assessed for consistency, leading to adjustments in the relative position of the proposals which had the same scores.
As is usual with exercises such as this, for both calls the number of proposals which met the threshold for funding exceeded the funding available. So, given that the strongest projects had greater priority, particular attention was paid to those which scored at the level corresponding to the ‘cut-off’ point for funding. In general the two dimensions were treated equally but in deciding which of the contending projects near the funding cut-off line should be funded, capacity building was given more weight.
Of the 66 proposals considered to be within the scope of the first call and following receipt of referees reports, 28 were identified by the committee as suitable for funding of which it recommended the strongest 20. There were sufficient funds to support the 13 top most ranked projects. Of the 69 proposals submitted to Call 2 selected by the advisory committee for further consideration 28 met the threshold suitable for funding support. Following negotiations with EPSRC and BBSRC for further funding, 21 projects were supported.
Types of Project
Although in selecting projects for funding it was not the intention to distinguish between different disciplines or between those which were aligned to a particular research council across the two calls there was felt to be a very effective balance between these for the projects which were funded. Further, the projects fell into four broad groups:
· Ethnographic - eight projects were based principally on open-ended observational, interview and discussion methodologies, largely with older people in their living, working and travelling environments. They included a significant contribution from social science perspectives.
· Modelling - nine were concerned with gathering data and modelling behavioural systems, relating to the visuomotor system and the use of packaging, computers and other technologies.
· Health - eight had a focus on physical and mental health issues, such as diet, exercise and cognition.
· Biology - nine were concerned with the biology of ageing.
Although it was the principal intention for the awards scheme to support those at an early stage in their careers there was also the hope that the scheme would be attractive to experienced researchers working in other fields. There was no attempt to manipulate the proportions of those at an early or very early stage in their career researchers and those who were experienced and mature researchers, but in the event about two thirds were at an early stage in their careers and a third were experienced researchers, see Table 3.2. The degree of experience varied across the different types of project. Those undertaking ethnographic projects were generally more experienced than those in the other groups.
Table 3.2: Research
experience of award holders by type of project
|
Experience |
Type
of Project |
|
|
||
|
|
Ethnographic |
Modelling |
Health |
Biology |
All |
|
Mature |
4 |
- |
1 |
- |
5 |
|
Experienced |
1 |
3 |
1 |
2 |
7 |
|
Some experience but in early-career |
1 |
1 |
1 |
1 |
4 |
|
Very early-career |
2 |
5 |
5 |
6 |
18 |
|
Total |
8 |
9 |
8 |
9 |
34 |
The Awards
Table 3.3: SPARC awards:
Call 1
|
Principal Investigator |
Institution |
Project Title |
Months ----- Award |
|
|
Mr Philip Astley |
South Bank |
Integrating the technological and social models of later life in the maintenance and adaptation of private housing |
12 |
£30,500 |
|
Dr Mark Bagley |
|
Chemical tool for ageing research |
12 |
£35,959 |
|
Mr Mike Bradley |
Middlesex |
An investigation into the advanced technology desires, needs and requirements of older drivers |
18 |
£55,500 |
|
Dr Richard Hartley |
|
EPR, oxidative stress and ageing |
18 |
£58,534 |
|
Dr Katrin Jennert-Burston |
|
A proteomics approach to understanding age-related changes in neuronal function |
18 |
£53,920 |
|
Dr Matthew Lancaster |
|
Ageing, exercise and gender: complex interactions and outcomes for all muscles |
12 |
£25,500 |
|
Dr Shaun Lawson |
|
Multimodal augmented reality to support ageing in place |
12 |
£28,994 |
|
Dr Gregory Marsden |
|
Transport and older people: integrating transport planning tools with users needs |
9 |
£24,963 |
|
Dr Charles Musselwhite |
subsequently UWE |
Prolonging safe driving behaviour through technology: attitudes of older drivers |
14 |
£27,691 |
|
Prof Richard Neale |
Glamorgan |
Design and community regeneration: Investigating personal safety concerns in socio-economically deprived communities in |
9 |
£28,640 |
|
Dr Elizabeth Ostler |
|
Chemical analysis of ageing tissue in Drosophila melanogaster |
18 |
£58,820 |
|
Dr Fiona Wylie subsequently Dr Terry Davis |
|
Evaluating the role of p38 MAP kinase in the accelerated ageing of WS fibroblasts |
12 |
£39,992 |
|
Dr Alaster Yoxall |
|
The 'inclusive engineering' approach: enhanced data gathering for an optimum diameter for ease of opening |
6 |
£17,048 |
Table 3.4: SPARC awards:
Call 2
|
Principal Investigator |
Institution |
Project Title |
Months - Award |
|
|
Dr Sarah Aldred |
|
Lipoprotein Oxidation in Ageing |
12 |
£29,148 |
|
Dr Ilaria Bellantuono |
|
Gene expression profiling to understand
stem cell ageing |
10 |
£28,288 |
|
Professor Peter Buckle |
|
Understanding the design of the
workplace for the older worker |
12 |
£36,357 |
|
Professor Paul Chamberlain |
SHU |
Design and the Home |
12 |
£23,178 |
|
Dr Richard Ferguson |
Strathclyde subsequently Loughborough |
Temperature and velocity interactions in
neuromuscular function during locomotion in older people |
12 |
£51,322 |
|
Dr Dianne Ford |
|
The molecular basis of the beneficial
effects of calorie restriction on ageing: DNA methylation influenced by
Sitr1-mediated histone deacetylation |
8 |
£44,682 |
|
Dr Tom Freeman |
|
Age, eye movement and motion perception |
12 |
£37,229 |
|
Professor Alistair Gibb |
Loughborough |
Ageing in construction workers |
12 |
£33,073 |
|
Dr Mark Hollands |
|
The contribution of visuomotor decline
to falls in older adults during adaptive locomotion |
12 |
£51,472 |
|
Miss Faustina Hwang |
|
Improving computer interaction for older
users: an investigation of dynamic on-screen targets |
12 |
£42,703 |
|
Professor Zoe Kourtzi |
|
In search of bio-markers for cognitive
ageing in the human brain |
12 |
£29,961 |
|
Dr Gladys Onambele-Pearson |
MMU |
Optimisation of skeletal muscle
responses and quality of life to exercise in people over 60 years old:
healthy diet vs dietary supplementation |
12 |
£28,245 |
|
Dr Donald Palmer |
RVC |
Unnatural ageing of killer cells |
12 |
£36,765 |
|
Dr Avril Thomson |
Strathclyde |
Designer relevant bio-mechanical data :
Packages opening in an older adult population |
12 |
£56,587 |
|
Dr Andrew Trafford |
|
An investigative approach to define a
role for endothelial nitric oxide synthase in the vascular biology of ageing
and consequences for cardiac function |
12 |
£32,695 |
|
Professor |
|
Investigating the neural underpinnings
of word-finding problems across the life span |
12 |
£40,022 |
|
Dr Christos Vasilakis |
|
Developing capacity for evaluating
proposed policies in the care for older patients through computer simulations
|
12 |
£38,838 |
|
Professor Paul Winyard |
|
Application of high-throughput assays of
oxidative stress to studies of the role of common genetic variation in
healthy human ageing |
12 |
£56,851 |
|
Dr Maria Klara Wolters |
|
What makes synthetic speech difficult to
understand for older people? The contribution of auditory ageing |
6 |
£17,775 |
|
Dr Ian Michael Wormstone |
UEA |
Age-related signalling capacities of the
human lens |
12 |
£50,083 |
|
Dr Panayiotis Zaphiris |
City |
Mathematical Modelling of Age Related
Differences in Web Browsing |
12 |
£26,600 |
Quality of Proposals
An indication of the quality of the proposals can be gained from Figure 3.2 which shows the distribution of scores for scientific excellence and capacity building for all of the proposals which were refereed. The distribution of scores for the two calls were similar. Of the proposals 45% scored above 7 for scientific excellence and 60% scored above 7 for capacity building. About a third of the proposals were judged as being uncompetitive on one or both of these dimensions, that is with scores below 6.5 and about 20% were very weak, scoring below 6.
Note: 1.Scale:
International leading 8.5 and above; International Competitive 8 – 8.4;
National Leading 7.5 - 7.9;
National Competitive 7- 7.4, Modest 6.5
– 6-9, Weak 6.0 - 5.4, Very Weak 5 - 5.9 , Inappropriate less than 5;
2. Calls 1 and 2 combined
Figure 3.2: Distribution of scores for the degree of Scientific
Excellence and Capacity Building potential of the proposals
Contractual Arrangements
Following clarification of any outstanding issues and receipt of responses from prospective award holders to feedback made by the advisory committee, contracts were issued for each project and monitoring arrangements put in place. The minimum requirement was that each project should provide a progress report on a six monthly basis, after which an interim payment would be made against costs certified by the host institution, and that final reports should be received within three months of the end of the project. In the event some projects required more time, often because of recruitment or other staffing difficulties, and a few did not adhere to the agreed deadlines. However, the number of such cases was small and all but one was easily handled. There were also expectations that award holders would become involved with SPARC workshops.
Resources Provided
Of the 34 proposals which were supported, 11 had one named co-investigator. For eight of these the co-investigators were quite involved with the projects but for two they were not. For the remaining single project the co-investigator took over when the principal investigator resigned her post. By the end of the projects five co-investigators and one research assistant had an involvement which was similar to that of the principal investigator. These truly were joint projects.
Those making proposals were encouraged to engage experienced and knowledgeable individuals in their projects as collaborators or mentors rather than as co-investigators. Whilst, at the time of the proposals, 22 of the projects had such collaborators, further collaborators joined most projects, partly out of necessity, and sometimes through the encouragement by the advisory committee and directors. The initial collaborators were mainly from within the academic world, often from an award holder’s own institution and sometimes from other institutions. Several proposals named non-academic collaborators, for example from industry, voluntary bodies, PCTs, and transport companies, but these projects and several others accumulated further collaborators, especially older people’s organisations, as the projects progressed. The distinction between co-investigator, researcher and collaborator was blurred, indeed there was one academic collaborator who became so involved with a project that in effect they were an active co-investigator, and another where the research assistant was effectively a co-investigator.
Of the 34 awards, two were funded entirely to provide equipment with which the investigators were able to pursue projects using staff and students funded from other sources; another was largely to meet similar ancillary and technical costs, again using staff and students funded from elsewhere. A further five projects were provided with funding for a research student, for example for the first 12 or 18 months of studying for a PhD, on the understanding that the award holders’ institutions would fund the rest of the studentship. A few had support for technician staff.
For 26 of the projects, support was provided for research staff, ranging from 5 to 25 person months, but very typically 12 months. Leaving aside the three projects which did not have any funding for staff at all, the average funding provided for research and technician staff and research students was 12 person months. However, as most of the award holders were to discover, the amount of work required to complete the projects was often greater, even though SPARC was not able to provide further funding for additional researcher time. By the time they reached their conclusion, most projects had a cluster of investigators, collaborators and researchers. These were acknowledged in the final reports and executive summaries of those reports.
Mentors
When designing their projects the applicants were encouraged to engage a mentor to help their introduction to the world of ageing research. This was purely voluntary and not all award holders did appoint mentors, largely those with extensive experience of research although outside of ageing. However, most of those at an early stage in their careers did appoint mentors, some with the help of the secretariat. Others had project steering groups and yet others had experienced collaborators who undertook this role. It was not the intention that SPARC should make contact with the mentors, not only because of resource limitations but because of fears of being intrusive into what should have become a collegial and personal relationship between the award holder and mentor. So it is not possible to give a formal review of the mentoring aspects of SPARC.
Of the 34 projects 17 had some form of mentoring or advisory process in place using individuals from outside of the research team, another five had informal local assistance or a very experienced collaborator who played this role. About half of these arrangements operated for most or all of the duration of the project. But some never functioned properly, for all sorts of reasons, for example, mobility of award holders or mentors, problems with scheduling appointments, misunderstandings about the role, and a lack of enthusiasm for the role. Nevertheless some award holders have reported very positively about the value of their mentors to their work and their personal development.
Final Reports
Each award holder was required to produce a final report and complete a project review form for consideration by external reviewers and the advisory committee. The review form requested information similar to that required by the research councils but with additional questions designed to elicit some reflections on the value of SPARC. The required format of the final report was deliberately open-ended, partly to reflect the diversity of topics and traditions supported by SPARC, partly to encourage a fuller exposition than is typically required by the research councils, and partly to ensure that the secretariat had access to all relevant materials, firstly, so as to understand the projects in detail and, secondly, to have materials available for dissemination purposes. The format of the reports reflected this advice, and took the form of papers which were almost ready to publish through to major volumes, generously illustrated with figures and photographs and endowed with many appendices, which were equally as acceptable.
Final reports and the project review forms were sent to one of the original referees and one member of the advisory committee for detailed review and to all members of the advisory committee also for review, although it was not expected that all committee members would review all final reports! A director reviewed each project and provided a director’s commentary on a project’s achievements and contribution. Reviewers were asked to comment on the reports in terms of scientific excellence, capacity building, resource management, and future directions and to make any further comments which seemed appropriate. They were also asked to rate the projects the reviewed on a scale from unsatisfactory to outstanding in terms of scientific excellence, capacity building and resource management, to provide an overall assessment of the project and an indication of the degree to which it had been worthwhile as a project for SPARC to have supported. The reviews were considered by the advisory committee which generated further comment for eventual feedback to the award holders, along with the responses of the reviewers.
The figures below provide an overview of the reviewers’ opinions of the projects as revealed by the final reports and the project review form.
For each measure about half of the projects were considered to be outstanding or tending to outstanding, about twelve to be good, four tending towards unsatisfactory and one or two unsatisfactory. About twenty of the projects were judged to be very or extremely worthwhile, seven as worthwhile, six as worthwhile in parts and one not worthwhile. After extensive deliberations the advisory committee identified two projects with outcomes which it considered unsatisfactory and a further four which it viewed with caution, but it was very satisfied with the outcomes of most of the other 28 projects and satisfied with the rest.
The reasons for a few projects being viewed as unsatisfactory were that the work which had been proposed had not been completed either because of a combination of factors outside of the control of the research team or because, although feasible, the project had not been finished. The reviewers and committee tended to be critical of project teams not completing what had been promised in their proposals, even though there may have been either mitigating circumstances or new opportunities may have led the research along unexpected paths. In particular many of the reviewers assessed the projects against what were judged to be quite high absolute standards. So it was for the committee to identify those proposals which, with the resources available, had been over-ambitious, and to take a realistic view about what had been achieved by what were mostly pilot projects.
Since the reviews of the final reports came at the end of SPARC, these had no bearing on the extent to which the award holders and their teams were able to participate in the full SPARC experience, save for one activity. For those few projects for which the final reports were judged as unsatisfactory or viewed with caution the advisory committee recommended that executive summaries should not be produced.
Figure 3.3: Reviewers
scores given to SPARC projects
Note: These figures are based on individual responses of
reviewers, two for each project,
rather than the average for each project.
Figure 3.4: Reviewers
scores for whether the projects were worthwhile