Guidance for grant applicants

• Details of the applicant/coapplicants including contact details, qualifications, and current posts
• The study title, its proposed start date, and duration
• A lay summary to help us with promotion and publicity of the project
• The research question and background behind it
• Proposed methods and experimental design
• Details of outcome timings and planned analyses
• Proposed benefits to animals in the study and the future
• Details of previous submissions of the same or related proposals

• Current and past funding details
• A breakdown of expected costs

• Supervisory details
• Information about planned student training

• Names and contact details of three external reviewers

We ask the reviewers to independently review your application, so you should have no conflicts of interest with any of them. We consider a conflict to include:

• Being an applicant or co-applicant in the current round of BSAVA PetSavers grants,
• Collaborating recently (within the last 2 years),
• Involvement in your current BSAVA PetSavers grant proposal, including advising on study design or commenting on the application,
• Having a close personal friendship, or
• Currently working in the same institution.

If, for any reason, your suggested reviewers are unable to assess your application, we reserve the right to ask another independent reviewer to do so.

Applicants from practice who do not have access to ethical review through a university are advised to apply for ethical review through the RCVS Ethics Review Panel.

Please submit details about the following ethics-related aspects on our grant application form:

• Recruitment and informed consent
• Animal welfare
• Risks and their management
• Inducements to participation
• Data protection
• Conflicts of interest

You are also required to provide supporting paperwork of your ethical committee approval.

• Name
• Current post (title, institution/ practice, date of appointment)
• Posts held within the last 10 years
• Details of previous research experience or training (include title, amount and source of funding)
• Relevant publications (list up to 10, give the citation in full, including the title of the paper and list all of the authors)
• Additional information that relates directly to the application (use up to 10 lines of text)

As well as the ethical approval documents, please also supply:

• A letter of support from your head of department or practice principal (not required for SRP grants).
• A signed copy of the BSAVA PetSavers’ terms and conditions for the relevant grant.

Find out what is already known about a subject. This should include not only research about the particular disease or condition that you wish to study, but also the methods and equipment you propose to use. If you are not working in an academic environment, you may need to arrange access to a specialist library to gain access to full-text articles. The RCVS Trust Library is a good place to start.

Once you have studied the literature you will be in a better position to specify the exact aims and objectives of your research. Does your research have a hypothesis that you are seeking to test? Does it address a significant clinical problem? It is important to be clear about the aims of the research considering:

• The population under investigation.
• The hypothesis.
• The outcome that will be measured.

The appropriate sample size and methods of study design will depend on the question that you are looking to answer, but the clinical research projects we prefer may be broadly categorised as follows:

• Prospective investigations: usually quantitative studies with finite objectives, often utilising modern science such as epidemiology or molecular biology as research tools.
• Multidisciplinary investigations: exploring biological mechanisms that underlie disease processes and/or the means by which these might be manipulated to improve diagnosis and management.
• Clinical trials: conducted to assess the efficacy of diagnostic techniques or therapeutic agents.
• Other research methodologies, including qualitative studies, will be considered if they are appropriate to the study and are likely to advance the understanding of the cause and/or management of a clinical disorder.

The sample size is almost always a compromise between recruiting a sufficient number to answer the research question and producing a manageable amount of data. To estimate the numbers of subjects or samples required, you should have some idea of what will be measured, the expected variability of the parameters to be measured (standard deviation or variance), and the size of effect that you expect to detect between the groups. The larger the natural variation and the smaller the effect, the larger the number of subjects or samples that will be required to have sufficient ‘statistical power’ to answer the question. Some of these numbers will be estimates which may be obtained from the literature or from a pilot study. Be careful extrapolating from the human literature, or from other species, unless there is other evidence to support the idea that the effect is likely to be similar. Whenever possible it is a good idea to consult a statistician at an early stage of planning a research project. The Journal of Small Animal Practice (JSAP) has provided an online collection of articles about statistical analysis as an introduction to the topic.

JSAP also provides assistance in designing, running and analysing clinical research projects in the form of the the Clinical Research Assessment and Guidance (CRAG) panel. The hope is that this will ease the path to publication for primary care veterinarians and house officers who wish to undertake high quality small animal clinical research. Individuals or groups with an idea for a clinical study can work with the CRAG panel to refine the methodology so that the project will be feasible and likely to come up with reliable answers. Find out more here and read the JSAP editorials: Scaling the CRAG to smooth the path to publication in JSAP and CRAG rocks (free for BSAVA members).

The recruitment of cases can be one of the most difficult parts of the research process. Be realistic about the number of cases that can be recruited and the time that it will take to collect the data. It is important to consider how the cases will be selected, inclusion and exclusion criteria, and how withdrawals will be handled. This is particularly important where some degree of follow up is intended. It is also important to consider how well the sample represents the type of cases that will normally be presented in veterinary practice. BSAVA members can apply for help with promoting their project and boosting recruitment through the BSAVA Research Board.

It is important to think about the ethics of your research proposal at an early stage, giving consideration to the welfare of the animals involved as well as issues of consent and confidentiality for the owners. Those working in academia will be expected to obtain ethical approval from their University or Research Institute. Those in practice may wish to get advice from a university or Research Institute and are advised to apply for ethical review through the RCVS Ethics Review Panel.

On 1st July 2022, the RCVS published new guidance on how to determine whether a proposed procedure or study is routine veterinary practice, clinical veterinary research or should be regulated under the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 (ASPA), and where to access relevant advice. This is highly relevant to BSAVA PetSavers’ grant applications and is particularly useful for those carrying out practice-based research.

The new guidance also introduces a specific obligation for practitioners to obtain an ethics review for all studies where the consent of an owner or keeper would be expected before an animal is included in a study, or where consent is needed for the use of an animal’s data or previously collected sample.

Good research will fail to achieve its aims if it is not communicated effectively to the wider research community and the public. While the preparation of an article for a peer reviewed journal can seem daunting, it must be considered an essential part of the process. All publications directly arising from grant support by BSAVA PetSavers are required to be submitted to JSAP as one of the terms and conditions of the grant. If you have any doubts about the suitability of your paper for JSAP, you should contact the Editor (jsapeditor@bsava.com).