Grant Proposal

Proposed Study and Budget Justification

Name

University

Professor

Name

Proposed Study

Participants

The proposed study to establish the cause of the misperception and misrepresentation of people with Alzheimer Disease (AD) in the society will target population of AD patients in mental health hospitals, mental health research centers, mental clinics and community groups that deal with Alzheimer’s disease patients (Lehmann & Barilan, 2015). The respondents will be tested for mental health soundness, so that other mental health factors do not influence the findings thus affecting its validity and reliability. The study will focus on three continents that are Africa, North America and Asia. This patients will be categorized depending on the medical therapy they are undergoing, in order to eliminate biasness of experimental error. Three countries will be selected randomly from each continent and three mental health hospitals, mental health research centers, mental clinics and community groups chosen from each country. The participants of age within 18 to 50 years will stratified in two groups’ consisting of male and female in the 50:50 ratio, and further stratification of the groups into eight groups of age interval of four. The study will aim at 15 participants in each age group for every mental health hospitals, mental health research centers, mental clinics and community groups chosen. Among the 15 participants, the three economic classes of low, middle and high social classes will be considered in order to capture wide range sources of information. In each class, one, patient, one family member and one medical practitioner will be interviewed. This will form a total of 1620 participants in the whole study. This will be adequate for elimination of sample size precision biasness. Larger sample sizes are essential for increasing degree of freedom and thus high precision. It will reduce the errors due to sampling and experiment.

Procedures

The study will utilize open-ended structured questionnaires that will be administered through face-to-face interviews and focus groups to collect primary data. The questionnaires will be pretested in the three continents to identify areas that need adjustments to maximize on data collection. The participants will include AD patients, family members, and healthcare practitioners. The interview is designed to take approximately 30 to 40 minutes on every respondent. The focus discussion will identify four groups only. The first group will be the victims of an AD. The second will be family members of AD patients, third, the community members who are not members of a family with AD victims and are aware of AD and the fourth will be the medical practitioners. The questionnaires will be filled well and taken back for analysis. Reports from focus groups shall be used to confirm the questionnaires and infer more concerning the subject.

Hypothesis and Analysis

The hypothesis of the study states that there are no misinterpretations and misrepresentations of people living with Alzheimer Disease (AD). The second null hypothesis states that people with Alzheimer Disease do not suffer from any physical, social or psychological impacts because they are not misrepresented or misinterpreted. This implies that the study will focus on the various misinterpretations and misrepresentation experienced among the people suffering from AD and will dig deep into the impacts these actions causes them. This will be done in a way that both general conclusions and specific conclusion shall be made considering continental diversity, age and social classes. The hypothesis will be tested on the level of confident of 0.5%. This will mean that the p value of the Anova that will be lower than the set value will indicate that the null hypothesis is not in conformity with the reality on the field and so will be rejected. This will indicate that AD patients face misinterpretation and misrepresentation which is also detrimental to them psychologically, socially, health and economically. This will be in agreement with that suggests that all kinds of discriminations are detrimental on the mentally disordered persona (Casado et al., 2017). The model for fighting this stigma will therefore be inevitable to be made in order to reduce the impact. If the reverse is found to be true. Research will have to shift its objectives or find out why the results appear so.

Data collected will be sorted accordingly to represent the various groups identified during data collection that is, gender, and victims of AD, family members, Health care professional, social classes and age groups. The questionnaires will be coded in order to identify important results that can be analyzed for comparison purposes. The structured codes will be fed in the analysis tool (SPSSsoftware) score sheet and analyzed qualitatively, according to Abojabel & Werner (2016). During analysis, data coding helps in separating the most important interview information compared to the other findings for the sake of achieving the specific objectives of the study and in testing the hypothesis. The number of participants that actually respond to the questionnaires (Stuckey, 2015) will guide coding. It will also help identify common items in the questionnaires form those that are rarely mentioned in the questionnaires by the respondents.

Budget Justification

In order to fully accomplish the specific objectives of the study and adequately test the hypothesis, the study will require a budget of USD $60,000. The funding will be used in designing the research, recruitment of research assistants and training them, acquisition of data collection tools, traveling, data collection processes, and data analysis. More money will be spent on respondent appreciation, scheduling focus groups and personal effects of the principle investigate overseeing the research. Budget justification shows the detailed expenditure of money in research and help in the success of the study (Anthopoulos et al., 2016). The expenditure will be channeled as follows:

Direct Costs

Personnel

The study will hire research assistants in the different continents and train them on the research data collection, recording, coding and analysis. This will ensure high quality and professionalism in conducting the research in which case its reliability and precision will be assured. A total of nine personnel will be hired in every continent to carry out data collection on the rate of USD $30 per day for ten days, with one supervisor for a number of ten days at USD $180 per day. The principle investigate will visit once and train them. The PI per Diem will be USD $2150 per day for twelve days. A data specialist will be hired for data coding at USD $1126. This will be replicated in all the three continents. The total cost on personnel will therefore be USD $31,606.

Equipment

The study will need three Apple computer Laptop of specification 15”, 4 GHz processor, and 1 TB hard drive, one in each continent with a specialized data professional supervisor to ensure real-time data sharing from the field. Three Smartphone with 84 mega pixel, retina screen display and 64 GB internal memory, three HD video camera, one pieces of an online video editing software and writing stationary. The 3 laptops will cost each $1800, 3 Smartphone at $70 adding to $210, 3 Video camera costing $1000 each, a video editing software at $300 and a packet of pens costing $30, a dozen spring files, at $20. The total budget for the equipment will be USD $8960.

Travel Expenses

Accessibility of the population during data collection shall be considered. The local traveling in each continent is estimated at $550. The PI traveling to the three continents is $4000. This will include the air tickets and the total costs on the local travel to the research station. Traveling expenses will be $4550.

Participant Support and Appreciation

Every participants will be given USD $10 in appreciation for participation. This will total to USD $16200.

Data analysis

Data analysis will need a new qualitative data analysis tool. The up to date version of SPSS will be bought at $10. During analysis, the PI will spent three days running data and collecting and arranging results in folders.

Indirect Costs

Miscellaneous Expenses

During data collection, there shall be emailing communication, Skype and telephone calling. After data analysis, the results will be printed. An estimated USD $1500 will therefore be allocated for phone call bills, online communication, photocopying and postage. Other indirect cost will include internal or local communication among the local research assistants that are hired for the data collection and dissemination of the questionnaires.

The study will also be allocated 10 percent indirect expenses calculated for the direct expenses. This there reflects that USD $48040 × 0.10 = USD $4804. This will take care of any regional variations in the market values of the projected costs in traveling and other overheads. Charging of the video camera batteries and laptops shall constitute the indirect costs. Usually, some hospitals may want a formal ethics formal or legal letter for research, which will demand typing and printing the letters. Although the researchers will be given special budges for identification.

Appendix A: Budget

Principal Investigator:
Grant Title: Cause of the misperception and misrepresentation of people with Alzheimer Disease (AD) in the society
Period of Performance:
	Principle Investigator(PI)
	Full Time Faculty Annual Salary		$90000
	Percentage of effort		30%	$27000
	Number of months		1.5
	Full Time A/P (10% time 1.5 Months)		$25800
	Graduate Assistant researcher (GSR)	3
	Full Time Graduate Assistant Annual		$50000
	Percentage of effort		50%	25000
	Number of months		1.5
	Graduate Assistant (50% time, 1.5 months)		$1800
	Data clerks	27	$300	$8100
	Data specialist	1	$1126	$1126
	Total salaries			$31,606.
	Direct cost
	Equipment
	laptop	3	$1800	$5400
	Smartphone	3	$70	$210
	Video camera	3	$1000	$3000
	online editing software	1	$300	$300
	Pen packet		$30	$30
	Dozen files		$20	$20
	Total Equipment expenses			$8960
	Travel Expenses
	PI			$4000
	GAR			$550
	Total Traveling Expenses			$4550
	Participant Appreciation	1620	$10	$16200
	Data analysis			$10
	Total direct cost			$53696
10%	Indirect Costs			$4804
	Miscellaneous Expenses			$1500
	Total funds requested			$60000

Reference

Abojabel, H., & Werner, P. (2016). Exploring family stigma among caregivers of persons with Alzheimer's disease: The experiences of Israeli-Arab caregivers. Dementia, 1471301216673920.

Anthopoulos, L., Reddick, C. G., Giannakidou, I., & Mavridis, N. (2016). Electronic government or e-government project failure has been widely discussed in the literature. Some of the common reasons cited for project failure are design-reality gaps, ineffective project management and unrealistic planning. Research shows that more than half of e-government projects result in total or partial failures with regard to the initially grounded standards, scheduling or budgeting... Government Information Quarterly, 33(1), 161-173.

Casado, B. L., Hong, M., & Lee, S. E. (2017). Attitudes Toward Alzheimer’s Care-Seeking Among Korean Americans: Effects of Knowledge, Stigma, and Subjective Norm. The Gerontologist, gnw253.

Lehmann, J., & Barilan, Y. M. (2015). De-constructing de-mentia: a personal and person oriented perspective of de-personalization and moral status. Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy, 18(1), 153-158.

Stuckey, H. L. (2015). The second step in data analysis: Coding qualitative research data. Journal of Social Health and Diabetes, 3(1), 7.