Page 34 - The lraternational Journal of the Royal Society of Thailand.indd

The International Journal of the Royal Society of Thailand
Volume XV-2023

The key steps in the grant-making process include calling for proposals,
reviewing the proposals, and awarding the CRF grants. The calls for proposals were
distributed widely across UHS faculties, and on the ADB website. The initial call for
proposals asked research teams to propose a research concept (rather than a full
proposal). The CRF then selected most promising research concepts, and invited the

concerned teams to develop full research proposals, with details of the research
questions, methods, and data collection procedures; estimated costs, implementation
and monitoring plans, milestones, and indicators. The CRF Committee then selected

the proposals to be awarded based on their relevance and originality. The main criteria
used for evaluating proposals included: (i) qualification, credentials, and availability
of the applicants; (ii) rationale and relevance of the research objectives; (iii) innovative
features; (iv) methodology. The CRF also encouraged collaboration with other research
institutions and/or the private sector.

(4) CRF award contracts. Once the CRF award was confirmed by the Selection
Committee, the selected research teams signed a service agreement contract with UHS
and ADB, with agreed deliverables and timeline. Research teams were allocated
research grants of $5,000 to $12,500. There contracts specified three grant payment
milestones; 50% upon signing of the service agreement, 30% upon delivery of the first

draft manuscript, and 20% upon final manuscript. The research grants were disbursed
to the individual account of the principal investigator upon reaching the payment
milestones.

(5) Execution of research projects. The CRF award team will execute the research
projects between Q2-2023 and Q1-2024. The results section of this article summarizes

the characteristics of the research projects.

(6) Monitoring of research projects. While the CRF Committee awarded the research
grants and monitored the progress of the awardees, the ADB team and UHS have
ensured compliance with UHS and ADB requirements. The UHS grant manager and
the CRF manager were responsible for collecting updates from the research teams,

and for reporting implementation progress to UHS and ADB quarterly. These updates
shall also include financial progress and payment milestones.

Data analysis

The project team recorded the characteristics of research projects in Microsoft
Excel spreadsheets. The team then analyzed the characteristics of projects (mean,
standards deviations, and percentages) through SPSS (version 29) statistical package.

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