Social and Behavioral Science

NIJ is seeking proposals for funding under the Comprehensive School Safety Initiative (CSSI) to support rigorous research that produces practical knowledge that can improve the safety of schools and students. The initiative is carried out through partnerships between researchers, educators and other stakeholders, including law enforcement and mental health professionals. Projects funded under the CSSI are designed to produce knowledge that can be applied to...

​NIJ seeks proposals to evaluate the Office on Violence Against Women’s (OVW) Sexual Assault Justice Initiative. The OVW Sexual Assault Justice Initiative will fund up to eight sites to implement performance measures intended to gauge prosecution efforts in cases of sexual assault. The performance measures are intended to improve prosecutorial practices by targeting accountability-related outputs and outcomes rather than determining success by conviction rates.

NIJ seeks proposals for research and evaluation of programs, practices, and policies designed to reduce firearms violence. This solicitation aims to strengthen our knowledge base and improve public safety by supporting projects with a high potential for accurately measuring the effects of efforts to reduce firearms violence. Such firearms violence reduction efforts may take any of a variety of forms, including but not limited to...

NIJ is seeking proposals for social and behavioral science research and program evaluations that inform efforts to detect, investigate, prosecute, and otherwise combat and prevent white-collar crime and public corruption. NIJ is particularly interested in proposals for research related to public corruption.

NIJ is seeking proposals for social and behavioral science research on, and evaluation related to, justice systems topics including policing, courts, and institutional and community corrections that bear directly and substantially upon federal, State, local, or tribal criminal and juvenile justice policy and practice.

NIJ is seeking proposals for research and evaluation that will examine violence and victimization experienced by American Indian (AI) and Alaska Native (AN) women living in Indian Country and Alaska Native villages to produce a deeper understanding of the issues faced by Native American women and help formulate public policies and prevention strategies to decrease the incidence of violent crimes committed against AI and AN...

NIJ is seeking proposals for criminal justice research and evaluation that includes a researcher-practitioner partnership component. Through researcher-practitioner partnerships, criminal justice practitioners can gain new skills in assessing programs and measuring outcomes. Likewise, criminal justice researchers can better understand the goals and purposes criminal justice practitioners seek to achieve. Ultimately, these partnerships provide criminal justice practitioners with practice- and policy-relevant information while affording researchers the...

NIJ is seeking proposals for research targeted toward developing a better understanding of the domestic radicalization phenomenon, and advancing evidence-based strategies for effective intervention and prevention. The goal of this solicitation is to aid federal, State, local, and tribal criminal justice agencies and their attendant communities in implementing programs that prevent or counter radicalization to violent extremism. The solicitation focuses on all forms of radicalization...

​NIJ is seeking proposals for research on sentinel events in the criminal justice system. When bad things happen in a complex system, the cause is rarely a single act, event, or slip-up. More often, bad outcomes like wrongful convictions, mistaken prison releases, and even revictimization are "sentinel events" -- defined as significant negative outcomes that signal underlying weaknesses in the system or process. Sentinel events...

NIJ is seeking proposals for research and evaluation relating to bias crime (a.k.a. hate crime) victimization. As compared with analogous crimes, bias crime is associated with more negative outcomes for victims and communities. NIJ is particularly interested in funding research to:  Develop and test screening and/or assessment tools to identify bias crime victims.Conduct localized victimization surveys using new and innovative sampling strategies to understand hate crime...

NIJ is seeking proposals for secondary data analysis of the 2010 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (NISVS) data. Noting a critical need for a national surveillance system that would produce frequent, consistent, and reliable data on the magnitude and nature of intimate partner violence, sexual violence, and stalking using consistent definitions and survey methods to evaluate trends over time, the CDC’s National Center...

NIJ seeks proposals for funding projects to study how criminal justice practitioners use research in their decision-making processes and how they implement evidence-based programs or practices. NIJ proposes two distinct research activities under this solicitation.Incorporating the Use of Research in Policy Decisions.Implementation Studies. Applicants may apply to one or both sections of the solicitation; however, proposal titles should clearly identify the section of the solicitation...

NIJ is seeking multidisciplinary research and evaluation proposals related to childhood exposure to violence. Such violence may include children who are direct victims and/or bystanders or observers of various forms of violence in the home, school, or community, including but not limited to peer victimization, bullying, harassment, child maltreatment, domestic violence, and community violence. Other types of violence to which children are exposed may be...

NIJ is seeking proposals for research and evaluation related to the abuse, neglect, and exploitation of elderly individuals. As the elderly population grows, crimes against this population are expected to increase. NIJ will be particularly interested in funding research to:

• Determine an estimate of the financial costs associated with elder abuse.
• Develop a taxonomy of case outcomes that can be used to define success from...

NIJ seeks applications to support the scholarship of up to three promising postdoctoral researchers to conduct original data collection and/or secondary data analyses on violence against women (intimate partner violence, sexual violence, teen dating violence, stalking) under the supervision of a mentor.

​NIJ is seeking proposals for research and evaluation on violence against women, and specifically intimate partner and sexual violence. For example, NIJ is interested in proposals to examine the effectiveness of specialized police and court-based units, services, and methods related to intimate partner and sexual violence. NIJ is also interested in research on the development, adaptation, and testing of screening tools used for the identification...

NIJ is seeking proposals for research and evaluation related to the investigation and adjudication of sexual assaults on college and university campuses. The White House Task Force to Protect Students From Sexual Assault identified a need to improve understanding of current practices in campus investigation and judicial decision-making involving student-on-student sexual assault. In response, NIJ is seeking proposals to examine:

• Current or new investigation practices...

With this solicitation, NIJ seeks proposals for innovative, rigorous research to identify and characterize the suicide prevention and intervention strategies currently being used by law enforcement agencies in the United States and, potentially, elsewhere. NIJ is particularly interested in understanding the rational e for the adoption of a particular strategy and what evidence may exist regarding its efficacy