Most grant applications fail because of problems in the Methods Section. You need to provide enough detailed, accurate, and clear methods information for reviewers:

• To understand your proposed research design and methods.

• To understand why you decided on particular features of your proposed research design and methods.

• To conclude that your proposed research design and methods will result in valid findings.

• To conclude that your proposed research design and methods are appropriate for you to achieve your proposed research objective and aims.

• To conclude that your proposed research design represents sound scientific methodology.

• To conclude that you, personally or through members of your research team, can successfully execute all of your proposed methods.

• To visualize your executing the proposed methods in a logical order.

• To view your credibility favorably.

In addition, you need to provide enough detailed, clear, and accurate information so that researchers – with your same or closely similar training and background – can (at least in theory) replicate your methods and come up with essentially the same data, results, and statistical analyses that you are proposing to achieve.

Chapter 5 covers basic organizational alternatives for the Methods Section and information to include when you are: (a) presenting your proposed research design and methods, (b) describing your SOS (subjects, objects of study, and specimens), and (c) describing your MET (materials, equipment, and tools). Chapter 6 focuses on how to draft procedures for collecting data and analyzing the data; and how to explain your potential methodological problems and proposed solutions. Chapter 6 includes guidelines on how to organize the Methods Section when some of the methodological features are the same or similar across aims or experiments – that is, when some of the methodological features are shared across the proposed aims or experiments. Chapter 6 also discusses the ending to the narrative.