writing of research statement

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How to Construct a Compelling Research Statement

A research statement is a critical document for prospective faculty applicants. This document allows applicants to convey to their future colleagues the importance and impact of their past and, most importantly, future research. You as an applicant should use this document to lay out your planned research for the next few years, making sure to outline how your planned research contributes to your field.

Some general guidelines

(from Carleton University )

An effective research statement accomplishes three key goals:

• It clearly presents your scholarship in nonspecialist terms;
• It places your research in a broader context, scientifically and societally; and
• It lays out a clear road map for future accomplishments in the new setting (the institution to which you’re applying).

Another way to think about the success of your research statement is to consider whether, after reading it, a reader is able to answer these questions:

• What do you do (what are your major accomplishments; what techniques do you use; how have you added to your field)?
• Why is your work important (why should both other scientists and nonscientists care)?
• Where is it going in the future (what are the next steps; how will you carry them out in your new job; does your research plan meet the requirements for tenure at this institution)?

1. Make your statement reader-friendly

A typical faculty application call can easily receive 200+ applicants. As such, you need to make all your application documents reader-friendly. Use headings and subheadings to organize your ideas and leave white space between sections.

In addition, you may want to include figures and diagrams in your research statement that capture key findings or concepts so a reader can quickly determine what you are studying and why it is important. A wall of text in your research statement should be avoided at all costs. Rather, a research statement that is concise and thoughtfully laid out demonstrates to hiring committees that you can organize ideas in a coherent and easy-to-understand manner.

Also, this presentation demonstrates your ability to develop competitive funding applications (see more in next section), which is critical for success in a research-intensive faculty position.

2. Be sure to touch on the fundability of your planned research work

Another goal of your research statement is to make the case for why your planned research is fundable. You may get different opinions here, but I would recommend citing open or planned funding opportunities at federal agencies or other funders that you plan to submit to. You might also use open funding calls as a way to demonstrate that your planned research is in an area receiving funding prioritization by various agencies.

If you are looking for funding, check out this list of funding resources on my personal website. Another great way to look for funding is to use NIH Reporter and NSF award search .

3. Draft the statement and get feedback early and often

I can tell you from personal experience that it takes time to refine a strong research statement. I went on the faculty job market two years in a row and found my second year materials to be much stronger. You need time to read, review and reflect on your statements and documents to really make them stand out.

It is important to have your supervisor and other faculty read and give feedback on your critical application documents and especially your research statement. Also, finding peers to provide feedback and in return giving them feedback on their documents is very helpful. Seek out communities of support such as Future PI Slack to find peer reviewers (and get a lot of great application advice) if needed.

4. Share with nonexperts to assess your writing’s clarity

Additionally, you may want to consider sharing your job materials, including your research statement, with non-experts to assess clarity. For example, NC State’s Professional Development Team offers an Academic Packways: Gearing Up for Faculty program each year where you can get feedback on your application documents from individuals working in a variety of areas. You can also ask classmates and colleagues working in different areas to review your research statement. The more feedback you can receive on your materials through formal or informal means, the better.

5. Tailor your statement to the institution

It is critical in your research statement to mention how you will make use of core facilities or resources at the institution you are applying to. If you need particular research infrastructure to do your work and the institution has it, you should mention that in your statement. Something to the effect of: “The presence of the XXX core facility at YYY University will greatly facilitate my lab’s ability to investigate this important process.”

Mentioning core facilities and resources at the target institution shows you have done your research, which is critical in demonstrating your interest in that institution.

Finally, think about the resources available at the institution you are applying to. If you are applying to a primarily undergraduate-serving institution, you will want to be sure you propose a research program that could reasonably take place with undergraduate students, working mostly in the summer and utilizing core facilities that may be limited or require external collaborations.

Undergraduate-serving institutions will value research projects that meaningfully involve students. Proposing overly ambitious research at a primarily undergraduate institution is a recipe for rejection as the institution will read your application as out of touch … that either you didn’t do the work to research them or that you are applying to them as a “backup” to research-intensive positions.

You should carefully think about how to restructure your research statements if you are applying to both primarily undergraduate-serving and research-intensive institutions. For examples of how I framed my research statement for faculty applications at each type of institution, see my personal website ( undergraduate-serving ; research-intensive research statements).

6. Be yourself, not who you think the search committee wants

In the end, a research statement allows you to think critically about where you see your research going in the future. What are you excited about studying based on your previous work? How will you go about answering the unanswered questions in your field? What agencies and initiatives are funding your type of research? If you develop your research statement from these core questions, your passion and commitment to the work will surely shine through.

A closing thought: Be yourself, not who you think the search committee wants. If you try to frame yourself as someone you really aren’t, you are setting the hiring institution and you up for disappointment. You want a university to hire you because they like you, the work you have done, and the work you want to do, not some filtered or idealized version of you.

So, put your true self out there, and realize you want to find the right institutional fit for you and your research. This all takes time and effort. The earlier you start and the more reflection and feedback you get on your research statement and remaining application documents, the better you can present the true you to potential employers.

More Advice on Faculty Job Application Documents on ImPACKful

How to write a better academic cover letter

Tips on writing an effective teaching statement

More Resources

See here for samples of a variety of application materials from UCSF.

• Rules of the (Social Sciences & Humanities) Research Statement
• CMU’s Writing a Research Statement
• UW’s Academic Careers: Research Statements
• Developing a Winning Research Statement (UCSF)
• Academic Packways
• ImPACKful Tips

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Writing a Research Statement

What is a research statement.

A research statement is a short document that provides a brief history of your past research experience, the current state of your research, and the future work you intend to complete.

The research statement is a common component of a potential student's application for post-undergraduate study. The research statement is often the primary way for departments and faculty to determine if a student's interests and past experience make them a good fit for their program/institution.

Although many programs ask for ‘personal statements,' these are not really meant to be biographies or life stories. What we, at Tufts Psychology, hope to find out is how well your abilities, interests, experiences and goals would fit within our program.

We encourage you to illustrate how your lived experience demonstrates qualities that are critical to success in pursuing a PhD in our program. Earning a PhD in any program is hard! Thus, as you are relaying your past, present, and future research interests, we are interested in learning how your lived experiences showcase the following:

• Perseverance
• Resilience in the face of difficulty
• Motivation to undertake intensive research training
• Involvement in efforts to promote equity and inclusion in your professional and/or personal life
• Unique perspectives that enrich the research questions you ask, the methods you use, and the communities to whom your research applies

How Do I Even Start Writing One?

Before you begin your statement, read as much as possible about our program so you can tailor your statement and convince the admissions committee that you will be a good fit.

Prepare an outline of the topics you want to cover (e.g., professional objectives and personal background) and list supporting material under each main topic. Write a rough draft in which you transform your outline into prose. Set it aside and read it a week later. If it still sounds good, go to the next stage. If not, rewrite it until it sounds right.

Do not feel bad if you do not have a great deal of experience in psychology to write about; no one who is about to graduate from college does. Do explain your relevant experiences (e.g., internships or research projects), but do not try to turn them into events of cosmic proportion. Be honest, sincere, and objective.

What Information Should It Include?

Your research statement should describe your previous experience, how that experience will facilitate your graduate education in our department, and why you are choosing to pursue graduate education in our department. Your goal should be to demonstrate how well you will fit in our program and in a specific laboratory.

Make sure to link your research interests to the expertise and research programs of faculty here. Identify at least one faculty member with whom you would like to work. Make sure that person is accepting graduate students when you apply. Read some of their papers and describe how you think the research could be extended in one or more novel directions. Again, specificity is a good idea.

Make sure to describe your relevant experience (e.g., honors thesis, research assistantship) in specific detail. If you have worked on a research project, discuss that project in detail. Your research statement should describe what you did on the project and how your role impacted your understanding of the research question.

Describe the concrete skills you have acquired prior to graduate school and the skills you hope to acquire.

Articulate why you want to pursue a graduate degree at our institution and with specific faculty in our department.

Make sure to clearly state your core research interests and explain why you think they are scientifically and/or practically important. Again, be specific.

What Should It Look Like?

Your final statement should be succinct. You should be sure to thoroughly read and follow the length and content requirements for each individual application. Finally, stick to the points requested by each program, and avoid lengthy personal or philosophical discussions.

How Do I Know if It is Ready?

Ask for feedback from at least one professor, preferably in the area you are interested in. Feedback from friends and family may also be useful. Many colleges and universities also have writing centers that are able to provide general feedback.

Of course, read and proofread the document multiple times. It is not always easy to be a thoughtful editor of your own work, so don't be afraid to ask for help.

Lastly, consider signing up to take part in the Application Statement Feedback Program . The program provides constructive feedback and editing support for the research statements of applicants to Psychology PhD programs in the United States.

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Writing an Effective Research Statement

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A research statement is a summary of research achievements and a proposal for upcoming research. It often includes both current aims and findings, and future goals. Research statements are usually requested as part of a relevant job application process, and often assist in the identification of appropriate applicants. Learn more about how to craft an effective research statement.

How to Write a Research Statement

• Experimental Psychology

Task #1: Understand the Purpose of the Research Statement

The primary mistake people make when writing a research statement is that they fail to appreciate its purpose. The purpose isn’t simply to list and briefly describe all the projects that you’ve completed, as though you’re a museum docent and your research publications are the exhibits. “Here, we see a pen and watercolor self-portrait of the artist. This painting is the earliest known likeness of the artist. It captures the artist’s melancholic temperament … Next, we see a steel engraving. This engraving has appeared in almost every illustrated publication of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and has also appeared as the television studio back-drop for the …”

Similar to touring through a museum, we’ve read through research statements that narrate a researcher’s projects: “My dissertation examined the ways in which preschool-age children’s memory for a novel event was shaped by the verbal dialogue they shared with trained experimenters. The focus was on the important use of what we call elaborative conversational techniques … I have recently launched another project that represents my continued commitment to experimental methods and is yet another extension of the ways in which we can explore the role of conversational engagement during novel events … In addition to my current experimental work, I am also involved in a large-scale collaborative longitudinal project …”

Treating your research statement as though it’s a narrated walk through your vita does let you describe each of your projects (or publications). But the format is boring, and the statement doesn’t tell us much more than if we had the abstracts of each of your papers. Most problematic, treating your research statement as though it’s a narrated walk through your vita misses the primary purpose of the research statement, which is to make a persuasive case about the importance of your completed work and the excitement of your future trajectory.

Writing a persuasive case about your research means setting the stage for why the questions you are investigating are important. Writing a persuasive case about your research means engaging your audience so that they want to learn more about the answers you are discovering. How do you do that? You do that by crafting a coherent story.

Task #2: Tell a Story

Surpass the narrated-vita format and use either an Op-Ed format or a Detective Story format. The Op-Ed format is your basic five-paragraph persuasive essay format:

First paragraph (introduction):

• broad sentence or two introducing your research topic;
• thesis sentence, the position you want to prove (e.g., my research is important); and
• organization sentence that briefly overviews your three bodies of evidence (e.g., my research is important because a, b, and c).

Second, third, and fourth paragraphs (each covering a body of evidence that will prove your position):

• topic sentence (about one body of evidence);
• fact to support claim in topic sentence;
• another fact to support claim in topic sentence;
• another fact to support claim in topic sentence; and
• analysis/transition sentence.

Fifth paragraph (synopsis and conclusion):

• sentence that restates your thesis (e.g., my research is important);
• three sentences that restate your topic sentences from second, third, and fourth paragraph (e.g., my research is important because a, b, and c); and
• analysis/conclusion sentence.

Although the five-paragraph persuasive essay format feels formulaic, it works. It’s used in just about every successful op-ed ever published. And like all good recipes, it can be doubled. Want a 10-paragraph, rather than five-paragraph research statement? Double the amount of each component. Take two paragraphs to introduce the point you’re going to prove. Take two paragraphs to synthesize and conclude. And in the middle, either raise six points of evidence, with a paragraph for each, or take two paragraphs to supply evidence for each of three points. The op-ed format works incredibly well for writing persuasive essays, which is what your research statement should be.

The Detective Story format is more difficult to write, but it’s more enjoyable to read. Whereas the op-ed format works off deductive reasoning, the Detective Story format works off inductive reasoning. The Detective Story does not start with your thesis statement (“hire/retain/promote/ award/honor me because I’m a talented developmental/cognitive/social/clinical/biological/perception psychologist”). Rather, the Detective Story starts with your broad, overarching research question. For example, how do babies learn their native languages? How do we remember autobiographical information? Why do we favor people who are most similar to ourselves? How do we perceive depth? What’s the best way to treat depression? How does the stress we experience every day affect our long-term health?

Because it’s your research statement, you can personalize that overarching question. A great example of a personalized overarching question occurs in the opening paragraph of George Miller’s (1956) article, “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information.”

My problem is that I have been persecuted by an integer. For seven years this number has followed me around, has intruded in my most private data, and has assaulted me from the pages of our most public journals. This number assumes a variety of disguises, being sometimes a little larger and sometimes a little smaller than usual, but never changing so much as to be unrecognizable. The persistence with which this number plagues me is far more than a random accident. There is, to quote a famous senator, a design behind it, some pattern governing its appearances. Either there really is something unusual about the number or else I am suffering from delusions of persecution. I shall begin my case history by telling you about some experiments that tested how accurately people can assign numbers to the magnitudes of various aspects of a stimulus. …

In case you think the above opening was to a newsletter piece or some other low-visibility outlet, it wasn’t. Those opening paragraphs are from a Psych Review article, which has been cited nearly 16,000 times. Science can be personalized. Another example of using the Detective Story format, which opens with your broad research question and personalizes it, is the opening paragraph of a research statement from a chemist:

I became interested in inorganic chemistry because of one element: Boron. The cage structures and complexity of boron hydrides have fascinated my fellow Boron chemists for more than 40 years — and me for more than a decade. Boron is only one element away from carbon, yet its reactivity is dramatically different. I research why.

When truest to the genre of Detective Story format, the full answer to your introductory question won’t be available until the end of your statement — just like a reader doesn’t know whodunit until the last chapter of a mystery. Along the way, clues to the answer are provided, and false leads are ruled out, which keeps readers turning the pages. In the same way, writing your research statement in the Detective Story format will keep members of the hiring committee, the review committee, and the awards panel reading until the last paragraph.

Task #3: Envision Each Audience

The second mistake people make when writing their research statements is that they write for the specialist, as though they’re talking to another member of their lab. But in most cases, the audience for your research statement won’t be well-informed specialists. Therefore, you need to convey the importance of your work and the contribution of your research without getting bogged down in jargon. Some details are important, but an intelligent reader outside your area of study should be able to understand every word of your research statement.

Because research statements are most often included in academic job applications, tenure and promotion evaluations, and award nominations, we’ll talk about how to envision the audiences for each of these contexts.

Job Applications . Even in the largest department, it’s doubtful that more than a couple of people will know the intricacies of your research area as well as you do. And those two or three people are unlikely to have carte blanche authority on hiring. Rather, in most departments, the decision is made by the entire department. In smaller departments, there’s probably no one else in your research area; that’s why they have a search going on. Therefore, the target audience for your research statement in a job application comprises other psychologists, but not psychologists who study what you study (the way you study it).

Envision this target audience explicitly.Think of one of your fellow graduate students or post docs who’s in another area (e.g., if you’re in developmental, think of your friend in biological). Envision what that person will — and won’t — know about the questions you’re asking in your research, the methods you’re using, the statistics you’re employing, and — most importantly — the jargon that you usually use to describe all of this. Write your research statement so that this graduate student or post doc in another area in psychology will not only understand your research statement, but also find your work interesting and exciting.

Tenure Review . During the tenure review process, your research statement will have two target audiences: members of your department and, if your tenure case receives a positive vote in the department, members of the university at large. For envisioning the first audience, follow the advice given above for writing a research statement for a job application. Think of one of your departmental colleagues in another area (e.g., if you’re in developmental, think of your friend in biological). Write in such a way that the colleague in another area in psychology will understand every word  — and find the work interesting. (This advice also applies to writing research statements for annual reviews, for which the review is conducted in the department and usually by all members of the department.)

For the second stage of the tenure process, when your research statement is read by members of the university at large, you’re going to have to scale it down a notch. (And yes, we are suggesting that you write two different statements: one for your department’s review and one for the university’s review, because the audiences differ. And you should always write with an explicit target audience in mind.) For the audience that comprises the entire university, envision a faculty friend in another department. Think political science or economics or sociology, because your statement will be read by political scientists, economists, and sociologists. It’s an art to hit the perfect pitch of being understood by such a wide range of scholars without being trivial, but it’s achievable.

Award Nominations . Members of award selection committees are unlikely to be specialists in your immediate field. Depending on the award, they might not even be members of your discipline. Find out the typical constitution of the selection committee for each award nomination you submit, and tailor your statement accordingly.

Task #4: Be Succinct

When writing a research statement, many people go on for far too long. Consider three pages a maximum, and aim for two. Use subheadings to help break up the wall of text. You might also embed a well-designed figure or graph, if it will help you make a point. (If so, use wrap-around text, and make sure that your figure has its axes labeled.)

And don’t use those undergraduate tricks of trying to cram more in by reducing the margins or the font size. Undoubtedly, most of the people reading your research statement will be older than you, and we old folks don’t like reading small fonts. It makes us crabby, and that’s the last thing you want us to be when we’re reading your research statement.

Nice piece of information. I will keep in mind while writing my research statement

Thank you so much for your guidance.

HOSSEIN DIVAN-BEIGI

Absolutely agree! I also want to add that: On the one hand it`s easy to write good research personal statement, but on the other hand it`s a little bit difficult to summarize all minds and as result the main idea of the statement could be incomprehensible. It also seems like a challenge for those guys, who aren`t native speakers. That`s why you should prepare carefully for this kind of statement to target your goals.

How do you write an action research topic?? An then stAte the problem an purpose for an action research. Can I get an example on language development?? Please I need some help.

Thankyou I now have idea to come up with the research statement. If I need help I will inform you …

much appreciated

Just like Boote & Beile (2005) explained “Doctors before researchers” because of the importance of the dissertation literature review in research groundwork.

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Writing a Research Statement

One of the steps to applying for academic jobs, which can be frustrating and tedious, is preparing a portfolio. This includes a research statement that outlines your plans as a generator of knowledge in the future during your academic career. If you have questions about how to write a research statement, we have already created  a handy guide  to help.

Additionally, there are many resources on the web that share great advice on how to complete this portion of your portfolio:

• How to Write a Research Statement  (video, from a STEM perspective)
• Dr. Karen’s Rules of the Research Statement  (from The Professor Is In.)
• Advice regarding research statements
• Sample research statements from University of Pennsylvania
• Sample research statements from Duke University
• Some advice on research statements from Cornell University

And remember, you can submit all your documents for prospective positions through Interfolio, a service for which the Graduate Center provides its PhD students. Learn more about Interfolio  here .

– Jennifer S. Furlong

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Empowering every person with a collaborative robot, writing a research statement for graduate school and fellowships.

Writing a research statement happens many times throughout a research career. Often for the first time it happens when applying to Ph.D. programs or applying to fellowships. Later, you will be writing postdoc and faculty applications. These documents are challenging to write because they seek to capture your entire research career in one document that may be read in 90 seconds or less.

Think of the research statement as a proposal. Whether you are applying for a Ph.D. program or for a faculty position, you are trying to convince the reader to invest in you. To decide whether to make this investment they need to know three things: 1) what will you do with the investment, 2) why is that an important problem ? and 3) what evidence is there that you will be successful in achieving the goals that you have set out.

The first paragraph, therefore, should describe what problem you are aiming to solve, and why it is an important problem. One common failure mode is to be too general and vague in this paragraph. Yes we all want to solve AI! But you want to write about your specific take, angle, or approach. This will set up the rest of the statement, about why you are the one person uniquely qualified to solve the problem you set up here. Sometimes people shy away from being too specific, because they worry that it will put them in a box. Don’t worry! Research interests always evolve, and you will not be signing in blood to do this exact research plan. It is better to ere on the side of being too specific because it shows you can scope out an exciting project and that you have good ideas, even if you are not sure that this specific idea is the one you will eventually pursue.

The next paragraphs should describe your past work as it fits into the research vision you have outlined in the first paragraph. You can start with a paragraph for each project or paper you have worked on. The paragraphs can be more or less the abstract for the paper . However you should be clear exactly what your role in the project was, give credit to collaborators, and spend more time on the parts of the project you contributed to directly. You also need to tie it to the research vision in paragraph 1. The strongest statement presents your life, as an arrow that points unambiguously towards solving the research question you have outlined in paragraph 1. Of course, no one’s life is actually an unambiguous arrow! However I think it helps to think that way because you are trying to tie the projects together to show how they have prepared you and furthered you along the research trajectory. Even if this project wasn’t directly connected in terms of its research questions, you can write about how it taught you technical tools that you can apply to your research objective, or how it taught you something that led to your current research objective.

The last paragraphs should describe concretely what you plan to do next. If you are applying to a Ph.D. program, you should name the groups you wish to work with and explain why they are a good fit for you. For a fellowship, you should describe why this work is a good fit for the work done by the organization you are applying to.

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How to Write a Research Statement

Last Updated: April 25, 2024 Fact Checked

This article was co-authored by Christopher Taylor, PhD . Christopher Taylor is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of English at Austin Community College in Texas. He received his PhD in English Literature and Medieval Studies from the University of Texas at Austin in 2014. There are 7 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 65,003 times.

The research statement is a very common component of job applications in academia. The statement provides a summary of your research experience, interests, and agenda for reviewers to use to assess your candidacy for a position. Because the research statement introduces you as a researcher to the people reviewing your job application, it’s important to make the statement as impressive as possible. After you’ve planned out what you want to say, all you have to do is write your research statement with the right structure, style, and formatting!

Research Statement Outline and Example

Planning Your Research Statement

• For example, some of the major themes of your research might be slavery and race in the 18th century, the efficacy of cancer treatments, or the reproductive cycles of different species of crab.
• You may have several small questions that guide specific aspects of your research. Write all of these questions out, then see if you can formulate a broader question that encapsulates all of these smaller questions.

• For example, if your work is on x-ray technology, describe how your research has filled any knowledge gaps in your field, as well as how it could be applied to x-ray machines in hospitals.
• It’s important to be able to articulate why your research should matter to people who don’t study what you study to generate interest in your research outside your field. This is very helpful when you go to apply for grants for future research.

• Explain why these are the things you want to research next. Do your best to link your prior research to what you hope to study in the future. This will help give your reviewer a deeper sense of what motivates your research and why it matters.

• For example, if your research was historical and the documents you needed to answer your question didn’t exist, describe how you managed to pursue your research agenda using other types of documents.

• Some skills you might be able to highlight include experience working with digital archives, knowledge of a foreign language, or the ability to work collaboratively. When you're describing your skills, use specific, action-oriented words, rather than just personality traits. For example, you might write "speak Spanish" or "handled digital files."
• Don’t be modest about describing your skills. You want your research statement to impress whoever is reading it.

Structuring and Writing the Statement

• Because this section summarizes the rest of your research statement, you may want to write the executive summary after you’ve written the other sections first.
• Write your executive summary so that if the reviewer chooses to only read this section instead of your whole statement, they will still learn everything they need to know about you as an applicant.
• Make sure that you only include factual information that you can prove or demonstrate. Don't embellish or editorialize your experience to make it seem like it's more than it is.

• If you received a postdoctoral fellowship, describe your postdoc research in this section as well.
• If at all possible, include research in this section that goes beyond just your thesis or dissertation. Your application will be much stronger if reviewers see you as a researcher in a more general sense than as just a student.

• Again, as with the section on your graduate research, be sure to include a description of why this research matters and what relevant skills you bring to bear on it.
• If you’re still in graduate school, you can omit this section.

• Be realistic in describing your future research projects. Don’t describe potential projects or interests that are extremely different from your current projects. If all of your research to this point has been on the American civil war, future research projects in microbiology will sound very farfetched.

• For example, add a sentence that says “Dr. Jameson’s work on the study of slavery in colonial Georgia has served as an inspiration for my own work on slavery in South Carolina. I would welcome the opportunity to be able to collaborate with her on future research projects.”

• For example, if your research focuses on the history of Philadelphia, add a sentence to the paragraph on your future research projects that says, “I believe based on my work that I would be a very strong candidate to receive a Balch Fellowship from the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.”
• If you’ve received funding for your research in the past, mention this as well.

• Typically, your research statement should be about 1-2 pages long if you're applying for a humanities or social sciences position. For a position in psychology or the hard sciences, your research statement may be 3-4 pages long.
• Although you may think that having a longer research statement makes you seem more impressive, it’s more important that the reviewer actually read the statement. If it seems too long, they may just skip it, which will hurt your application.

Formatting and Editing

• For example, instead of saying, “This part of my research was super hard,” say, “I found this obstacle to be particularly challenging.”

• For example, if your research is primarily in anthropology, refrain from using phrases like “Gini coefficient” or “moiety.” Only use phrases that someone in a different field would probably be familiar with, such as “cultural construct,” “egalitarian,” or “social division.”
• If you have trusted friends or colleagues in fields other than your own, ask them to read your statement for you to make sure you don’t use any words or concepts that they can’t understand.

• For example, when describing your dissertation, say, “I hypothesized that…” When describing your future research projects, say, “I intend to…” or “My aim is to research…”

• At the same time, don’t make your font too big. If you write your research statement in a font larger than 12, you run the risk of appearing unprofessional.

• For instance, if you completed a postdoc, use subheadings in the section on previous research experience to delineate the research you did in graduate school and the research you did during your fellowship.

Expert Q&A

You might also like.

• ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/graduate_school_applications/writing_a_research_statement.html
• ↑ https://www.cmu.edu/student-success/other-resources/handouts/comm-supp-pdfs/writing-research-statement.pdf
• ↑ https://postdocs.cornell.edu/research-statement
• ↑ https://gradschool.cornell.edu/academic-progress/pathways-to-success/prepare-for-your-career/take-action/research-statement/
• ↑ https://libguides.usc.edu/writingguide/executivesummary
• ↑ https://www.niu.edu/writingtutorial/style/formal-and-informal-style.shtml
• ↑ https://www.unr.edu/writing-speaking-center/student-resources/writing-speaking-resources/editing-and-proofreading-techniques

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Writing a research statement

By michael ernst, december, 2011 last updated: march 29, 2016.

A research statement lays out your vision of your research, including both your accomplishments to date and your plans for the future. It is a required part of many applications — for graduate school , for fellowships , for jobs (especially academic jobs ), for awards, etc.

This is a short collection of advice regarding some mistakes I have seen people make in their statements. It is incomplete at present, but still useful if it helps you avoid those common but important blunders.

Write your statement in the first person.

Your statement will likely discuss multiple research projects or results. Readers are unlikely to remember each of the projects in detail (though they may remember that you are broad, which is good). It will be easiest for readers to remember your work, and equally importantly to place it in context as they read your statement, if you can show how the projects are related. They might be in the same research subarea, or use related techniques, or stem from your own experiences, etc. Find a way to tie them together, which will make readers more likely to understand them. Furthermore, readers will be more likely to believe that you may continue to produce similar results in the future, if they see a pattern. After starting out with an overview (which might describe the general topic and its importance), tie the description of each result or project into that overview.

Somewhere — maybe at the beginning, though more likely at the end — you need to bring the statement to life and let your personality show through. Permit yourself to gush about how much you enjoy research: show that you really care about this and why. For example, you might state how important it is to you and how it has changed the way you think about your research area computing. Another way to address this (not incompatible with the others) is to say why you got involved in research at all; that might go at the beginning. If readers believe that you are enthusiastic about the topic, they will be more likely to believe that you are doing a great job and will be more favorably inclined toward you in general.

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How to Write a Research Statement

By  Sarah Hildebrand

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Research statements have become a core component of faculty job applications. A research statement is a map for your career as a researcher, expanding on how you describe your research in your cover letter. A research statement should document a three- to five-year plan that lays out attainable goals. It should explain your past, present, and future research projects, as well as any major accomplishments. Make sure to highlight your strengths and the importance of your future work, but be realistic about what you can achieve—search committees will know the difference.

Tips and Considerations for Writing an Effective Research Statement

The length of a research statement varies by discipline. Although the average is three pages, it may be slightly shorter (1-2 pages) in the humanities or slightly longer (3-4 pages) in the social sciences and STEM fields.

Organization

Research statements begin with an introductory paragraph that describes your overall work and field, followed by body paragraphs that narrow down into your specific area of expertise and projects.

While some research statements are organized topically by project, most are ordered chronologically. Begin by discussing any past work, such as your dissertation; next describe any current research projects; end with ideas you have for the future. Some applicants may choose to use headings to further delineate among projects or clarify whether certain paragraphs focus on past, present, or future work.

Depending on your discipline, you may choose to include an executive summary at the end of your statement, which summarizes your main research goals, methodology, and qualifications for the position. STEM students may also incorporate relevant graphics that help clearly demonstrate results at a glance.

Research statements should be written for generalists who would make up a search committee. Contextualize your work within your field, avoid jargon, and make sure your work can be understood across your discipline.

Avoid long paragraphs. Paragraphs should never take up more than half a page and may be even shorter. If you have a lot to say about one particular project, that section might be broken up into 2-3 paragraphs to help keep your reader engaged.

Research statements should be written in the first-person and in the active voice. Both of these rhetorical strategies will ensure that you remain the focus of the statement. Your writing should be clear, concise, and assertive.

Example of passive vs. active voice:

Passive voice: The data was collected over a series of three experiments.

Active voice: I collected the data over a series of three experiments.

Topics to Cover in Your Research Statement

The subject and importance of your research.

Describe your general interest area, specific areas of expertise, and methodologies. Explain exactly what your research is and why it matters. How is your work innovative? What contribution does it make to existing bodies of knowledge? What major problems will you solve?

Past, Current, and Future Research Projects

Search committees expect you to discuss multiple projects. While you will certainly spend a paragraph or two on your dissertation, you should also have additional works-in-progress, as well as two or three defined projects you will conduct in the future. You can also describe any projects you’ve completed in the past. Be sure to draw connections between projects and demonstrate how your future work will build off the work you’ve already done. This will help prove that the project is feasible and that you are qualified to lead it.

Major Accomplishments

Describe any publications you have in a sentence or two by explaining what knowledge they contribute to the field. You should also acknowledge any major grants received, sources of funding secured, or awards won.

Additional Considerations for STEM Applicants

In a research statement, STEM applicants must demonstrate that their work is independent from the work of their PI. It may be helpful to describe how you will involve students of your own in your lab. If you require lab equipment and/or support staff, make sure all of your planned research can be accommodated by the institution as is, or identify how you will secure funding to obtain additional resources. Identify potential sources of external funding for your work, as well as potential collaborators within the department, school, or industry. Try to be as specific as possible by naming particular organizations or researchers.

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Department of Psychology

Writing a research statement.

Ten Tips for Writing a Compelling Research Statement (A non-exhaustive list)

1. Focus on your intellectual interests and professional goals.

• Although many programs ask for ‘personal statements’, these are not really meant to be biographies or life stories.  What we hope to find out is how well your abilities, interests, experiences and goals would fit within our program. 

2. Describe your relevant experience (e.g., honors thesis, research assistantship) in specific detail.

• If you have worked on a research project, what was the research question, what were the hypotheses, how were they tested, and what did you find?
• Being specific shows us that you really were a key part of the project and that you understand what you did!

3. Whenever possible, demonstrate rather than simply state your knowledge.

• Not very convincing: “In this project, I learned a great deal about the psychology of persuasion”
• More convincing: “In this project, I learned about the elaboration likelihood model of persuasion (Petty & Caccippo, 1986), and came to understand the importance of distinguishing between central and peripheral information processing when examining why different types of messages influence people."

4. Honestly identify concrete skills you would bring to graduate school, and also describe the skills you hope to acquire.

• For example: “I am familiar with conducting t-tests and ANOVAs in SPSS, but am eager to advance my statistical knowledge.  In particular, structural equation modelling will be an important technique to learn given the types of research questions I intend to pursue.”

5. Articulate why you want to pursue a graduate degree. 

• What are your career goals and how will pursuing a graduate degree advance them?

6. Articulate why you want to pursue a graduate degree at this specific institution !

• How can we help you achieve your goals?

7. Outline your core research interests and explain why you think they are scientifically and/or practically important.  Again, be specific.

• Not very convincing: “I am interested in investigating why people discriminate against others because discrimination is a very important social problem."
• More convincing: “I am interested in investigating why people discriminate against others.  In particular, I want to examine the role that implicit attitudes and stereotypes play in causing people to make biased decisions. Biased decisions – in hiring, promotion, law enforcement, and so on – can result in widespread societal disparities.  Research by Correll, Park, Judd and Wittenbrink (2007), for example, suggests that racial disparities in shootings of suspects may be partially due to automatically activated stereotypes…”

8. Link your research interests to the expertise and research programs of faculty here. 

• Identify at least one faculty member with whom you would like to work.
• Read some of their papers, and describe how you think the research could be extended in one or more novel directions.  Again, specificity is a good idea.
• This is where you really have the opportunity to demonstrate your fit to a program and your ability to think critically, creatively and generatively about research.

9. Ask at least one professor at your current (or prior) institution to give you feedback on your statement.

10. Proofread!  Or better yet, have a spelling and grammar-obsessed friend proofread your statement.

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July 8, 2013, by dan cosley | july 8, 2013, writing a research statement (for a tenure package).

tl/dr : Research statements should demonstrate that you have made or will make an impact through effective, clear storytelling about what you have done and how it connects to your research community. Careful organization and clear evidence of impact can help you make this case to the many different kinds of people who will read your statement.

One of the main docs you write as part of the tenure process is a research statement, and before revising mine, I wanted to spend some time thinking about what makes for an effective statement. We also write these during the job search and various other times during the career, so hopefully this post will have broad appeal. The thoughts below are based on my own thinking, talking with other professors, and looking at my own and other people’s past research statements for tenure [0].

We’ll start with a few key points up front. First, in line with the typical tenure and promotion criteria at research universities [1], a main goal of the statement is to demonstrate that your work has had, and will continue to have, an impact on your research community. So a glorified annotated bibliography of your work is not going to cut it. You need to talk about how your work fits into the broader conversation, why it’s interesting and exciting and important.

Second, as stated by Mor Naaman in a comment on my original tenure post , not everyone who reads your statement (or your dossier [2]) is going to be an expert in your field. So, a glorified annotated bibliography of your work is not going to cut it. Not only do you need to position your work in your community, you need to do this in a way that letter writers, your dean, and faculty across the university will appreciate.

Third, even for those who are experts, they’re not likely to be experts on you, meaning that your research statement has real impact on how and when people think about you [3]. So, a glorified… well, you get the picture, but the key insight here is that the research statement is telling a story about you just as much as it is about the research [4].

So, how do research statement writers go about accomplishing these goals? For the most part, what I saw was a lot of work around organizing the story and showing current impact in ways that was broadly accessible, but less on the questions of ‘so what’ and ‘what next’.

Organizing the story

Based on the statements I looked at, the general approach was to focus on some small number of broad topical themes that represent research questions or areas that people claim to make key contributors to. The work itself is used to illustrate the contributions, possibly with some sub-themes inside the area to help readers group the individual papers. Then, an overall story ties the areas together with some kind of bigger picture and/or longer-term research goals.

How broad the goals, themes, and sub-sections are depends in part on how long you’ve been in the game and how broad your interests are–which implies that your research statement will continue to evolve over time [5]. For instance, my fall 2007 job hunt statement  and spring 2011 third year review statements  are organized quite differently because I had another 3.5 years of deepening and broadening my work and thinking both on specific projects and on how the different strands tied together [6]. (I wrote a bit about this evolution in “ The Incredible Evolving Research Statement “, which is a reasonable companion to this post.)

Most of the statements were broadly chronological, especially within areas. I think this on balance was used to show the accumulation, evolution, and deepening of one’s own work in an area. Some (including mine), but not all, were also chronological across the areas, which as a reader I saw as illustrating the person’s career arc. None was comprehensive, and some work was left out; instead, the statements focused on telling a more or less coherent story [7].

There are other ways to tell the story of your research besides chronology plus research areas. For instance, I could imagine talking about my own work as a grid where levels of analysis (individual, dyad, group/community) are on one axis and major research area/question (recommendation, user modeling, system-building, reflection) is on the other [8], then positioning work in the grid cells. This would be particularly useful for showing breadth across a couple of intersecting areas, maybe for highlighting interdisciplinarity. If I wanted to emphasize my techy/system-building bits, I could imagine organizing the statement around the systems that I’ve built, supervised, and studies along the way, with research questions emerging as themes that repeatedly occur across the systems [9]. But the overall story plus themes and chronological evolution model feels both fairly common and effective, and I do like the 2011 version a lot — so I’m likely to do an update but not rework of it for the tenure package.

Showing (current) impact

Much of the discourse on this side focused on various forms of evidence that other people, mostly in the academic community, cared about the work.

Most folks worked in some mention of support for their work, notably grant funding. Funding is direct evidence that people think you and your work are interesting enough to spend money on [10]. Yes, this is in your CV, but so are many other things you’ll talk about in the statements, and yes, done to excess or done badly it could feel a little off-putting. But it is honest and valuable to acknowledge support and it is pretty easy to make it part of the story (e.g., “I received an NSF grant to help answer my questions around X”).

Likewise, everyone talked about collaborators and students they’ve worked with. Much as with grants, collaboration says people think you and your work are interesting enough to spend time on [11]. Further, to some extent we’re known by the company that we keep, and collaborating with good people reflects well on you. Again, done as an exercise in name-dropping this could be tedious, but again, it’s easy to work naturally into the conversation–and again, it’s a worthy and honest thing to point out that you had help along the way.

People also mentioned how the work connected to and through groups or workshops they organized, led, and contributed to that are directly related to their research [11a]. To some extent, this overlaps with the service statement , but as with direct collaboration, if people are willing to band together with you it shows that people value the kinds of work that you do and see you as a positive influence.

Some folks talked about citations, h-indices, and other citation metrics. Citations are a proxy for attention, interest, and quality in your work, both the particular work being cited and in your reputation more generally (because well-known and -regarded people are more likely to come to mind). There are some problems with quantitative metrics of scholarly impact: differing practices and sizes across fields affects numbers; not all citations are positive; to do it right you’d probably need to compare to peers’ citation activity; etc. But citations have some value as an indicator of impact [12]. It’s a little harder to weave this in naturally, though you can use the numbers to point out particularly impactful papers, or use the data to give an overview to make the case that your career as a whole has been noticed.

For the most part, those were the high points. I do want to point out that there are lots of other ways one might talk about making impact. I’ll pass the torch to Elizabeth Churchhill’s discussion of impact more generally  that among other things riffs off of Judy Olson’s Athena award talk about the many paths to scholarly impact at CSCW 2012 . A group called altmetrics is pushing on other ways to think about impact, and other folks such as danah boyd [13] and Johnny Lee have carved careers out of making impact beyond research papers. These kinds of impact are worth talking about. However, for all that academia is pretty liberal politically, it’s fairly conservative in how it measures impact, and so a diversified portfolio with a fair percentage invested in traditional impact measures is probably less risky.

The statements didn’t have so much to say about potential future impact and work directly. There was sometimes a discussion of the next questions on a current line of work, and sometimes the overarching research question was used to highlight a general next line or lines. I guess this makes sense, because our next research moves are shaped by resources, people, contexts, and events [14], but it was a little surprising given the ‘future continued potential’ part of the tenure evaluation process.

Likewise, there was not as much “so what” as there probably could be, especially. There were reasonable connections to other work at a high level [15], to help make novelty claims and make the ‘so what’ case within the field. But there is much less of an argument about why the work is important to do in the grand scheme of things. This may be in part an artifact of length restrictions (there’s not a formal limit, but most of the tenure-time ones seem to clock in around 4-5 pages plus references). Our values around academic freedom also probably help us out when folks in other fields look at our tenure cases, even if they don’t see obvious indicators of importance, and our external letter writers are probably close enough to our work to appreciate it for its own sake. But I was still surprised at how little this was addressed in our statements.

So, that’s it for now–I should probably stop writing about writing research statements and get on to the business at hand. It was, however, useful spending some time thinking about what might make for a good research statement and hopefully some of this thinking will help future fellow travelers out.

[0] Web search turns up a variety of other useful resources and perhaps I should have just read them rather than writing my own. However, spending some time writing and analyzing myself felt valuable, and most of those I did find seem to be tuned toward research statements for the graduating PhD seeking a job rather than tenure. Many also seem to have been generated by searching for other articles about writing research statements. That said, this article on research statements from Penn’s career services  looked useful and had pointers to some examples. Oregon Academic Affairs also has some thoughtful slides on writing tenure statements, including the research statement.

[1] Here’s an example of promotion guidelines from Cornell’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences .

[2] Also part of Cornell ADVANCE’s  “Successful Tenure Strategies” document .

[3] I haven’t been on a tenure committee yet, because you don’t get to vote on tenure cases until you have it, but for faculty hiring a number of recommendation letters look a lot like the candidate’s research statement or dissertation proposal/outline. I am guessing similar effects will happen for tenure letter writers.

[4] John Riedl often gave me talk advice that a key takeaway, in addition to the main points, should be that you’re awesome (not via self-aggrandizing–not John’s style–but through being interesting and demonstrating competence). It seems apropos here as well.

[5] Dan Frankowski , a research scientist at GroupLens when I was there, once claimed that the main thing we learn in grad school is how to tell bigger and better stories about the work.

[6] I made a followup post about how these statements evolved with some behind-the-scenes thinking, but this is already a pretty long post in its own right.

[7] It is fine to leave side projects out. A piece of career/tenure advice I have received from multiple sources is that it’s good to become known as “the X guy” for some very small number of X’s (often 1). Thus, focusing on the coherent and compelling story of ($1 to Richard Hamming) You and Your Research is probably best. Your side stuff will be in your CV and your online portfolio, and if people care about them and/or they’ve had an impact, you’ll get to talk about them.

[8] Joe Konstan sometimes talks about the grid as a useful way to organize a research story. For instance, for a dissertation you might try different items on the axes (levels of analysis, research questions, time periods, systems, theories, etc.), and think about a research path that cuts across a column, a row, or (to sample the space) a diagonal. If I were to do this for my tenure case, it feels like most of the cells should be filled in, at least some.

[9] Unless you’re in a clearly systems areas, though, focusing on systems runs the risk of pigeonholing you. You probably want to study recommender systems, not GroupLens; crisis informatics, not Katrina; collaboration, not Wikipedia; crowd work, not Mechanical Turk. I know that some people think of me as a “Wikipedia guy”, and that’s part of my story, but only part.

[10] The contrapositive is not true; if work isn’t funded, it still might be important and impactful. There are lots of ways to not get funding.

[11] Again, the contrapositive isn’t true; some disciplines and traditions value solo research more than my home area of HCI, and some people are just more comfy working alone and don’t seek collaborators.

[11a] Folks who are creating or colonizing quite new areas may find it useful to do a bunch of community-building through workshops, special issues, and the like to build and connect to fellow travelers.

[12] Here, unfortunately, the contrapositive is more plausible: you do want your work to be cited.

[13] Who has enough impact that, at least as I was writing this, if you typo her name to “danah body” Google will give you a “Did you mean: danah boyd”.

[14] FYI, although this is a true answer to kind of “Where do you see yourself in N years” question that you might get asked during a job interview, it is not a good answer. This I can attest from personal experience.

[15] Not many citations though, which was a little surprising, because that could both help ground the work and suggest appropriate tenure letter writers.

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Very helpful – thank you so much for taking the time to share this.

Welcome and hopefully it’s actually useful down the road. If so, feel free to share with your friends. 🙂

thanks a ton. Nice post, great for centering my mind around this daunting task! Merci! -Chris @whiteliesbook

Yeah, good point on making clear what the request is, and when it’s needed. A post on making effective requests would be pretty useful. slope game

Crafting a compelling research statement for the tenure process involves more than just presenting a glorified annotated bibliography. Your emphasis on demonstrating the impact of your work within the broader research community is crucial. The chronological organization of your research reminds me of the online help I got at https://customwriting.com/buy-research-paper resource where experts supported arguments by thematic areas, effectively illustrates the evolution and depth of your contributions. Incorporating evidence of impact, such as grant funding, collaboration, and workshops, adds a layer of validation that extends beyond the academic sphere. While future potential and the broader significance of your work could receive more attention, your insights into constructing an impactful research narrative are valuable for academics.

Writing a Research Statement is a pivotal task for academics and professionals alike. It encapsulates the essence of one’s scholarly pursuits, outlining objectives, methodologies, and anticipated outcomes. Crafting a compelling statement necessitates clarity, conciseness, and coherence. As scholars delve into their areas of expertise, they must articulate their contributions to the field and highlight their unique perspective. Considering the importance of research impact, a well-articulated statement can pave the path for academic success and recognition. Amidst the process, consulting resources like BrainStation reviews can offer valuable insights, aiding in refining the statement and ensuring its effectiveness in communicating the researcher’s vision and potential.

It’s crucial to be aware of the risks associated with publishing personal information online. From identity theft to invasion of privacy, the internet can be a minefield. Just like being cautious about what you eat to maintain good health, being mindful of what you share online is equally important. Remember like rybelsus reviews some things are best kept private to protect yourself from potential harm.

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Home / Professional Development / Resources / Research Statement

• Research Statement

Research institutions increasingly request that applicants for academic positions involving a significant percentage of research time include a research statement with other application materials. This may be more common for postdoctoral scholars applying for research faculty positions, particularly in STEM fields, but is sometimes a request of graduate students and those in the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences for faculty positions involving both research and teaching responsibilities.

The research statement describes your current research and plans for future research endeavor. While your CV lists facts about your research, your research statement offers the opportunity to expand and provide personal context, such as why you chose this research subject, difficulties and how you resolved them, and why the research is important. In one to three pages, the statement demonstrates your:

• independent research ability
• writing proficiency
• potential for grant application success

Description of past research should lead to and support the goals you have for future research. The description of current research includes how you will communicate your results, such as publication in a dissertation, paper, book, or other academic forum. The statement should showcase your research success but, more importantly, describe your future research goals and how they are different (and independent from) those you pursued under your faculty adviser. It is key to show your path to research independence, that you developed and followed independent research that you plan to continue to develop wherever you are hired.

If your adviser recommends it, you might want to write different research statements for different institutions and describe how your research goals align with the mission of each institution and program you’re applying to. The most important reviewer of your research statement prior to you sending it with your other portfolio items is your faculty adviser.

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• Writing Research Statements
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In many ways, the research statement is the easiest of the materials you will put together for an academic job application, because you have spent years thinking about your research and working on your dissertation or thesis project, and you have probably created an abstract of this major project at some point along the way. The goal now is to bring all of this information together in a cogent, succinct, and forward-looking discussion of your research activity.

Below you will find some tips for writing an effective research statement:

• After a brief introduction outlining your general research interests, you should move directly into a discussion of your dissertation or thesis project. Spend a few paragraphs outlining the core of your argument and, most importantly, the contribution your work makes to the larger conversation in your field. Most people can speak fluently about their dissertations, but showing that you understand the contours of your discipline can set you apart from other candidates.
• You need to talk about more than just your dissertation, though. You should mention some of your other publications and how they fit into your research agenda. More than this, though, you should also spend some time describing your future research plans and goals. Search committees will want to see that you have a road map for the early part of your career as a faculty member and researcher, so it is vital that you can write with specificity about the work to which you will turn over the next few years.
• As with your  teaching philosophy , you need to be specific and avoid jargon. Avoiding jargon is especially important here because there may be members of the search committee who are not experts in your field.  You will need to convey the essence of your research as clearly as possible. Think of it as a teaching activity, which – in fact – it is.
• Two pages are probably the maximum for a research statement.  Going over two pages implies that you lack focus.

Additional Resources (including sample statements): From Cornell University’s Graduate School:  “Research Statements.”

From the University of Washington’s Career Center:  “Academic Careers – Research Statements”  (PDF).

Research Statement:  https://www.vpul.upenn.edu/careerservices/writtenmaterials/researchstatements.php

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Research statements for faculty job applications

The purpose of a research statement.

The main goal of a research statement is to walk the search committee through the evolution of your research, to highlight your research accomplishments, and to show where your research will be taking you next. To a certain extent, the next steps that you identify within your statement will also need to touch on how your research could benefit the institution to which you are applying. This might be in terms of grant money, faculty collaborations, involving students in your research, or developing new courses. Your CV will usually show a search committee where you have done your research, who your mentors have been, the titles of your various research projects, a list of your papers, and it may provide a very brief summary of what some of this research involves. However, there can be certain points of interest that a CV may not always address in enough detail.

• What got you interested in this research?
• What was the burning question that you set out to answer?
• What challenges did you encounter along the way, and how did you overcome these challenges?
• How can your research be applied?
• Why is your research important within your field?
• What direction will your research take you in next, and what new questions do you have?

While you may not have a good sense of where your research will ultimately lead you, you should have a sense of some of the possible destinations along the way. You want to be able to show a search committee that your research is moving forward and that you are moving forward along with it in terms of developing new skills and knowledge. Ultimately, your research statement should complement your cover letter, CV, and teaching philosophy to illustrate what makes you an ideal candidate for the job. The more clearly you can articulate the path your research has taken, and where it will take you in the future, the more convincing and interesting it will be to read.

Separate research statements are usually requested from researchers in engineering, social, physical, and life sciences, but can also be requested for researchers in the humanities. In many cases, however, the same information that is covered in the research statement is often integrated into the cover letter for many disciplines within the humanities and no separate research statement is requested within the job advertisement. Seek advice from current faculty and new hires about the conventions of your discipline if you are in doubt.

Timeline: Getting Started with your Research Statement

You can think of a research statement as having three distinct parts. The first part will focus on your past research, and can include the reasons you started your research, an explanation as to why the questions you originally asked are important in your field, and a summary some of the work you did to answer some of these early questions.

The middle part of the research statement focuses on your current research. How is this research different from previous work you have done, and what brought you to where you are today? You should still explain the questions you are trying to ask, and it is very important that you focus on some of the findings that you have (and cite some of the publications associated with these findings). In other words, do not talk about your research in abstract terms, make sure that you explain your actual results and findings (even if these may not be entirely complete when you are applying for faculty positions), and mention why these results are significant.

The final part of your research statement should build on the first two parts. Yes, you have asked good questions, and used good methods to find some answers, but how will you now use this foundation to take you into your future? Since you are hoping that your future will be at one of the institutions to which you are applying, you should provide some convincing reasons why your future research will be possible at each institution, and why it will be beneficial to that institution, or to the students at that institution.

While you are focusing on the past, present, and future or your research, and tailoring it to each institution, you should also think about the length of your statement and how detailed or specific you make the descriptions of your research. Think about who will be reading it. Will they all understand the jargon you are using? Are they experts in the subject, or experts in a range of related subjects? Can you go into very specific detail, or do you need to talk about your research in broader terms that make sense to people outside of your research field focusing on the common ground that might exist? Additionally, you should make sure that your future research plans differ from those of your PI or advisor, as you need to be seen as an independent researcher. Identify 4-5 specific aims that can be divided into short-term and long-term goals. You can give some idea of a 5-year research plan that includes the studies you want to perform, but also mention your long-term plans, so that the search committee knows that this is not a finite project.

Another important consideration when writing about your research is realizing that you do not perform research in a vacuum. When doing your research you may have worked within a team environment at some point, or sought out specific collaborations. You may have faced some serious challenges that required some creative problem-solving to overcome. While these aspects are not necessarily as important as your results and your papers or patents, they can help paint a picture of you as a well-rounded researcher who is likely to be successful in the future even if new problems arise, for example.

Follow these general steps to begin developing an effective research statement:

Step 1: Think about how and why you got started with your research. What motivated you to spend so much time on answering the questions you developed? If you can illustrate some of the enthusiasm you have for your subject, the search committee will likely assume that students and other faculty members will see this in you as well. People like to work with passionate and enthusiastic colleagues. Remember to focus on what you found, what questions you answered, and why your findings are significant. The research you completed in the past will have brought you to where you are today; also be sure to show how your research past and research present are connected. Explore some of the techniques and approaches you have successfully used in your research, and describe some of the challenges you overcame. What makes people interested in what you do, and how have you used your research as a tool for teaching or mentoring students? Integrating students into your research may be an important part of your future research at your target institutions. Conclude describing your current research by focusing on your findings, their importance, and what new questions they generate.

Step 2: Think about how you can tailor your research statement for each application. Familiarize yourself with the faculty at each institution, and explore the research that they have been performing. You should think about your future research in terms of the students at the institution. What opportunities can you imagine that would allow students to get involved in what you do to serve as a tool for teaching and training them, and to get them excited about your subject? Do not talk about your desire to work with graduate students if the institution only has undergraduates! You will also need to think about what equipment or resources that you might need to do your future research. Again, mention any resources that specific institutions have that you would be interested in utilizing (e.g., print materials, super electron microscopes, archived artwork). You can also mention what you hope to do with your current and future research in terms of publication (whether in journals or as a book), try to be as specific and honest as possible. Finally, be prepared to talk about how your future research can help bring in grants and other sources of funding, especially if you have a good track record of receiving awards and fellowships. Mention some grants that you know have been awarded to similar research, and state your intention to seek this type of funding.

Step 3: Ask faculty in your department if they are willing to share their own research statements with you. To a certain extent, there will be some subject-specific differences in what is expected from a research statement, and so it is always a good idea to see how others in your field have done it. You should try to draft your own research statement first before you review any statements shared with you. Your goal is to create a unique research statement that clearly highlights your abilities as a researcher.

Step 4: The research statement is typically a few (2-3) pages in length, depending on the number of images, illustrations, or graphs included.  Once you have completed the steps above, schedule an appointment with a career advisor to get feedback on your draft. You should also try to get faculty in your department to review your document if they are willing to do so.

Explore other application documents:

/images/cornell/logo35pt_cornell_white.svg" alt="writing of research statement"> Cornell University --> Graduate School

Writing your research statement, set yourself apart.

Most reviewers volunteer their time. Faced with a huge pile of applications, they’ll move quickly and won’t take time to search out hidden answers.

In reviewing your application, the reader will scan for clear answers to three questions:

• What new knowledge will be generated for the discipline?
• Why is it valuable?
• How can they be assured the conclusions will be valid?

You want to make sure that the reviewer will be left with something to remember: a message that will remain after reading many other proposals. Make sure your proposal is clear and has a strong opening paragraph that will grab the reader’s attention. Your statement should tell a compelling story with a beginning, a middle, and an end.

Avoid jargon

Always keep in mind that reviewers may not be experts in your particular research area. It is essential that you couch your proposal in language and a narrative that will be accessible to an intelligent but non-specialized reviewer. In particular, don’t use jargon. Eliminate any theoretical discourse that is only accessible to those trained in your area.

Keep the spotlight on ideas

Start with a subject that interests you – a research proposal or a question – and develop a good proposal around it. Don’t worry if your proposed research project isn’t the “hot” topic in the field right now. In fact, an off-the-beaten-path project may stand out among all the other applications.

Show the reviewer that you are ready to take on the challenge of independent research; that you have not only a strong foundation for research as evidenced by a knowledge of the core scholarly publications in your discipline, but also that you possess the creativity, passion, and drive that will take you from more passive learning to active invention and hypothesis. Be clear about how you will undertake the research and how you will analyze the results. Argue why you think this is the best approach to the problem.

Explain which approaches are standard and which are innovative. The way you formulate your questions and describe how you will address them will reveal a lot to the review committee about your thought processes.

Your proposal is not the same as a final plan

If you’re a first-year student, remember that you’re writing a proposal: you are not committed to following the exact path you establish in your proposal. Most funding agencies expect that your project will change as you get underway. The important thing is to show that you’ll be capable of carrying out research in the discipline area proposed given the resources available to you.

Applying for dissertation-year fellowships

If you’re applying for a dissertation-year fellowship, the bar has been raised. Given your breadth of experience, the reviewers will expect to see more from you than they will from a first-year student. Reviewers will want to see that you’ve taken an interest in your professional development by presenting at national conferences and by having publications accepted to peer-review journals or in process, so be sure to address those issues.

Discuss your research proposal with your special committee chair, your director of graduate studies, faculty in your field, and other students. If you can identify students who have had successful proposals or faculty who have served as adjudicators, ask them. It’s okay to tailor your research statement to present the version most likely to win the fellowship. Focus on the aspects of your project that are the best fit with the sponsoring agency’s stated goals for the fellowship program. If you need inspiration, check out the reference notebooks of successful applications available in 350 Caldwell Hall.

Details matter, so sweat them

Your bibliography is important. This is where you will show experts in your field that you know the discipline and that you’ve done your homework. Make sure you cover the key papers in your discipline, but don’t make the bibliography too long. Reviewers want to see that you can distinguish between the most important contributions and secondary papers. A good bibliography shows you know enough about the discipline to avoid duplicating other work.

Proof your work

Make sure that there are no typographical or grammatical errors and follow the guidelines carefully. Your statements reflect on the level of professionalism you will bring to your research. When the competition is extreme, reviewers look for clues that differentiate one application from another. Typographical errors, grammatical errors, and inattention to guidelines will create suspicion over your attention to detail and will probably result in your application being passed over.

Allow enough time

You need to be exceptional in an excellent group of applicants. A good proposal may take up to three months to develop. Write a draft, seek input from others, revise, set it aside, come back to it, revise again, seek input again. Keep working until you have a polished product. If you put in the time to make your proposal as good as it can be, it will show in the end result and your application will be more competitive.

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How much time should you spend sitting versus standing? New research reveals the perfect mix for optimal health

Postdoctoral research fellow at Swinburne University Centre for Urban Transitions, Swinburne University of Technology

Disclosure statement

Christian Brakenridge does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Swinburne University of Technology provides funding as a member of The Conversation AU.

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People have a pretty intuitive sense of what is healthy – standing is better than sitting, exercise is great for overall health and getting good sleep is imperative .

However, if exercise in the evening may disrupt our sleep, or make us feel the need to be more sedentary to recover, a key question emerges – what is the best way to balance our 24 hours to optimise our health?

Our research attempted to answer this for risk factors for heart disease, stroke and diabetes. We found the optimal amount of sleep was 8.3 hours, while for light activity and moderate to vigorous activity, it was best to get 2.2 hours each.

Finding the right balance

Current health guidelines recommend you stick to a sensible regime of moderate-to vigorous-intensity physical activity 2.5–5 hours per week.

However mounting evidence now suggests how you spend your day can have meaningful ramifications for your health. In addition to moderate-to vigorous-intensity physical activity, this means the time you spend sitting, standing, doing light physical activity (such as walking around your house or office) and sleeping.

Our research looked at more than 2,000 adults who wore body sensors that could interpret their physical behaviours, for seven days. This gave us a sense of how they spent their average 24 hours.

At the start of the study participants had their waist circumference, blood sugar and insulin sensitivity measured. The body sensor and assessment data was matched and analysed then tested against health risk markers — such as a heart disease and stroke risk score — to create a model.

Using this model, we fed through thousands of permutations of 24 hours and found the ones with the estimated lowest associations with heart disease risk and blood-glucose levels. This created many optimal mixes of sitting, standing, light and moderate intensity activity.

When we looked at waist circumference, blood sugar, insulin sensitivity and a heart disease and stroke risk score, we noted differing optimal time zones. Where those zones mutually overlapped was ascribed the optimal zone for heart disease and diabetes risk.

You’re doing more physical activity than you think

We found light-intensity physical activity (defined as walking less than 100 steps per minute) – such as walking to the water cooler, the bathroom, or strolling casually with friends – had strong associations with glucose control, and especially in people with type 2 diabetes. This light-intensity physical activity is likely accumulated intermittently throughout the day rather than being a purposeful bout of light exercise.

Our experimental evidence shows that interrupting our sitting regularly with light-physical activity (such as taking a 3–5 minute walk every hour) can improve our metabolism, especially so after lunch.

While the moderate-to-vigorous physical activity time might seem a quite high, at more than 2 hours a day, we defined it as more than 100 steps per minute. This equates to a brisk walk.

It should be noted that these findings are preliminary. This is the first study of heart disease and diabetes risk and the “optimal” 24 hours, and the results will need further confirmation with longer prospective studies.

The data is also cross-sectional. This means that the estimates of time use are correlated with the disease risk factors, meaning it’s unclear whether how participants spent their time influences their risk factors or whether those risk factors influence how someone spends their time.

Australia’s adult physical activity guidelines need updating

Australia’s physical activity guidelines currently only recommend exercise intensity and time. A new set of guidelines are being developed to incorporate 24-hour movement. Soon Australians will be able to use these guidelines to examine their 24 hours and understand where they can make improvements.

While our new research can inform the upcoming guidelines, we should keep in mind that the recommendations are like a north star: something to head towards to improve your health. In principle this means reducing sitting time where possible, increasing standing and light-intensity physical activity, increasing more vigorous intensity physical activity, and aiming for a healthy sleep of 7.5–9 hours per night.

Beneficial changes could come in the form of reducing screen time in the evening or opting for an active commute over driving commute, or prioritising an earlier bed time over watching television in the evening.

It’s also important to acknowledge these are recommendations for an able adult. We all have different considerations, and above all, movement should be fun.

• Physical activity
• Health research

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