Research Infrastructure in the Social and Behavioral Sciences | PD 23 277Y

Opportunity Information: Apply for PD 23 277Y

The National Science Foundation (NSF) Research Infrastructure in the Social and Behavioral Sciences (RISBS) program funds projects that build the kind of shared infrastructure social and behavioral scientists rely on to do basic research. The emphasis is on creating computational tools, platforms, and data resources that make it easier for a broad research community to collect, manage, share, and analyze information about human behavior and society. NSF frames the longer-term public value of this work as enabling research that can ultimately contribute to improved health, prosperity, and security, but the core purpose of RISBS is infrastructure creation rather than direct hypothesis-driven research.

RISBS is designed for proposals that produce reusable resources, not for projects where the main goal is the principal investigator's own research findings. Any research activities included in a RISBS proposal are expected to be clearly in service of building, testing, validating, or demonstrating the infrastructure itself (for example, piloting a new data collection system, benchmarking a tool, documenting data quality, or creating workflows and standards others can adopt). NSF explicitly encourages innovation, which in this context usually means new approaches to data collection at scale, modern computational methods for handling social science data, improved accessibility and interoperability, or tools that lower barriers for other researchers to run studies and work with complex datasets.

A major part of RISBS is NSF's direct support for three flagship longitudinal surveys and panel studies that have become foundational to understanding change in American society over time. These include the American National Election Study (ANES), widely described as a "gold standard" source for data on voting, public opinion, and political participation in U.S. national elections; the General Social Survey (GSS), a nationally representative interview survey of U.S. adults covering a wide range of social attitudes and behaviors; and the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), a long-running longitudinal study of U.S. families that tracks economic, social, and health factors across time. NSF notes these studies have been recognized as highly influential national research resources, reflecting their long-term impact and broad use across the social sciences.

It is important procedurally that RISBS manages separate solicitations for ANES, GSS, and PSID, each with its own requirements and submission deadlines. In contrast, other types of social and behavioral science infrastructure proposals can be submitted to the RISBS program at any time (the opportunity is open with proposals accepted on a rolling basis), and some projects may also arrive via transfer from other NSF Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE) programs following those programs' submission rules. RISBS can also co-fund projects with other SBE programs when a proposed tool or dataset is especially valuable to a field or represents a notable infrastructure innovation.

From an applicant perspective, NSF strongly encourages prospective PIs to contact RISBS program officers (and, when relevant, program officers in other SBE programs) before submitting. This is both to confirm fit and to navigate NSF rules around duplicate or substantially similar proposals, which are governed by the NSF Proposal and Award Policies and Procedures Guide (PAPPG). NSF also flags a related funding pathway, the Human Networks and Data Science - Infrastructure (HNDS-I) program, which supports development of data resources and analytic techniques for research in the social, behavioral, and economic sciences and may be a better match for some infrastructure-focused ideas.

Administrative details from the listing include that this is a discretionary NSF grant opportunity (Funding Opportunity Number PD 23 277Y) in the Science and Technology and other Research and Development category (CFDA 47.075). Eligibility is listed as unrestricted, meaning it is broadly open to applicant entity types unless additional eligibility notes apply in the full solicitation materials. The award ceiling is $2,000,000, NSF anticipates around 5 awards, and the posting date is October 5, 2023.

• The National Science Foundation in the science and technology and other research and development sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Research Infrastructure in the Social and Behavioral Sciences" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 47.075.
• This funding opportunity was created on Oct 05, 2023.
• Applicants must submit their applications by Proposals accepted anytime. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Each selected applicant is eligible to receive up to $2,000,000.00 in funding.
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 5 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: Unrestricted (i.e., open to any type of entity above), subject to any clarification in text field entitled Additional Information on Eligibility.

Apply for PD 23 277Y

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