In Australia, the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) is the government funding body that manages the award and distribution of health and medical research grants.
In an effort to improve equity across research applications for this very competitive funding, there is provision for applicants to list career disruption and relative-to-opportunity statements. This is consistent with most funding schemes.
To be eligible for career disruption you need to have taken a continuous leave of absence for at least 90 days due to pregnancy, injury/illness or carer responsibilities. The relative-to-opportunity section is more flexible.
The applicant can identify anything that had an impact on research productivity, either personal or professional. The circumstances are then supposed to be taken into account by reviewers when assessing an applicant’s track record.
In theory, this is meant to adjust for research opportunities, improve the fairness of access and equity of funding, and recognise career diversity for its value to research outcomes.
In practice, the NHMRC Investigator Grant 2022 Peer Reviewer Guidelines provided no objective method of assessing the impact of this information.
The guidelines inform what applicants are able to include as relative to opportunity and that this should be considered commiserate to the barriers and opportunities available to them, considering their career stage and typical performance of researchers in their field.
Beyond this, it refers the reviewer to assessment category descriptors but does not indicate objective adjustment procedures to assist reviewers with fairly scoring the applicant.
Similarly, applicants claiming relative to opportunity have no indication of how their (often very personal) information will be used by reviewers.
While there is a statement directing reviewers to maintain consistency in their judgement and reasoning across all applicants they review, there is no objective means to adjust for inconsistency across reviewers.
Let’s say the applicant claims relative to opportunity because they have multiple sclerosis and experience depression and reduced information processing speed as a result. How does a reviewer adjust for someone who has developed or maintained a research career while managing such an illness?
Now let’s assume the person is a carer for someone with a severe disability that requires full-time supervision. If the applicant experiences compounding barriers, should the adjustment be larger or is there a ceiling?
If the reviewer considered the applicant’s scores to be in the ‘very good’ category (score of 4) without a relative-to-opportunity claim, should the reviewer then increase the score to 5 to account for the impact of multiple sclerosis?
Should they again increase the score for the impact of their caring responsibilities, or is this too excessive?
Maybe a whole category increase is too excessive for either of these relative-to-opportunity claims, which raises the question about how the reviewer applies the adjustment, given that whole score increases are the only option.
Then there is the question of whether reviewers without experience in the impact of the person’s unique situation should be expected to measure its worth and apply adjustments.
NHMRC is working to improve gender inequity in the distribution of research funding and has developed a 2022-2025 strategy to guide this. There is currently no focus on diversity and inclusion funding distribution processes more broadly.
This is quizzical, given NHMRC has a diversity and inclusion staffing strategy and the theme of their translational symposium this year is ‘Embracing Diversity’.
It is also puzzling because NHMRC has a policy around the inclusion of people with lived experience in research from idea conception through to translation.
A focus on relative to opportunity is critical to supporting researchers with lived experience and improving diversity and inclusion because it adjusts for inequity barriers.
However, the application of relative to opportunity requires procedures to reduce bias (including implicit bias). Concerns about how career disruption is applied have been raised previously, including the idea that there needs to be a formula for application.
Previous research has highlighted that some researchers do not disclose career disruptions due to bias concerns. NHMRC has acknowledged inequities and biases in the distribution of funding and has made changes to the funding scheme framework aimed at improving fairness in distribution and transparency of processes.
I would argue that more changes are required. Indeed, those who are brave enough to disclose their personal information should have confidence it will be used appropriately.
Disclosure
Dr Lisa Grech is a person with multiple sclerosis and major depressive disorder, as well as a carer of her daughter who has a severe intellectual disability requiring full-time supervision. She applied for and was unsuccessful in receiving an NHMRC EL2 investigator grant this year. She received an overall score of 4.394, placing her in category 4 (the lowest 4% of EL2 applicants). She is unsure if or how relative to opportunity was applied to her scores and, assuming it was applied, whether she would have been placed in category 3 without it (0% of applicants placed in this category).
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