The NEA Research Labs program funds transdisciplinary research teams grounded in the social and behavioral sciences, yielding empirical insights about the arts for the benefit of arts and non-arts sectors alike.
Established in FY 2017, the NEA Research Labs continue to build public knowledge about the arts and their contributions to individuals, communities, and society at large. Through this program, we are cultivating transdisciplinary research partnerships that are producing research findings and evidence-based tools of value not only to arts practitioners, but also to non-arts sectors such as healthcare, education, and business or management. Institutions of higher education and/or nonprofit research and policy organizations may submit applications to be NEA Research Labs.
The NEA Research Labs program offers grant funding for longer-term research agendas. These agendas will include multiple research studies and activities that build and inform the field throughout the life of an NEA Research Lab. Applicants seeking grant funding for a specific and discrete research study should refer to the Research Grants in the Arts program guidelines.
As in previous years, we welcome applications from diverse research fields (e.g., economics; psychology; education; sociology; medicine, health, and therapy; communications; business administration; urban and regional planning). We expect our total awards portfolio to be diverse in terms of geographical distribution, the artistic and research fields or disciplines involved, and the research topics proposed. We also expect our portfolio to reflect an array of study design characteristics.
Accordingly, applicants may propose research projects drawing from a range of study design types. In recent years, the NEA has supported a growing cohort of studies that hypothesize a cause-effect relationship between the arts and key outcomes of interest (e.g., in health, education, or the economy). For projects seeking to explore causal claims about the arts, experimental approaches (e.g., randomized controlled trials) are generally preferred. Where experimental approaches are not feasible, then high-quality, quasi-experimental design studies offer an attractive alternative for impact studies about the arts.
In many cases, however, other or different study design characteristics will be preferable. These designs may include, but are not limited to, case studies, complex surveys, mixed methods, and meta-analyses. In particular, we encourage community-based participatory research approaches where warranted by the research objective. Program evaluations also are eligible for funding.
The NEA research agenda states that, through such awards, the agency will “incentivize the creation of practitioner tools grounded in research.” In keeping with this aim, we especially welcome translational research that moves scientific evidence toward the development, testing, and standardization of new arts-related programs, practices, models, or tools that can be used easily by other practitioners and researchers. This function is especially important to NEA Research Labs, which should be prepared to contribute products and services not only for the research community but for practitioners in the arts and other sectors.
Deadline: March 27, 2023