• Arrange an initial 1:1 meeting with an RSS adviser to assess your needs

• Arrange one or several meetings between you and our team to discuss your proposal from a multi-methodological point of view

• Patient and Public Involvement expertise

• Review your narrative CV

• Review your funding application and provide feedback in the run-up to submission

• Offer a mock interview

• Arrange a 45-minute meeting with one or two of our advisers for a discussion of your project and some initial pointers, and/or...

• Review your funding application and provide feedback in the run-up to submission

• Review your narrative CV

• Offer a mock interview

• Review your funding application and provide feedback in the run-up to submission

• Offer a mock interview (likely to be a shortened mock interview with fewer panel members)

• Arrange a 30-minute meeting with one or two of our advisers for a discussion of your project and some initial pointers

• We will try to arrange last-minute mock interviews if the interview is in more than 10 days’ time (likely to be a shortened mock interview with fewer panel members)

• We'll assess the requests on a case-by-case basis - but it is unlikely that we will be able to offer support

Where time allows, we prefer to start by offering an informal chat with one or two of our advisers. They will discuss your research proposal with you, offer some initial advice and will tell you more about the services that the RSS can offer.

It is likely that your adviser will suggest a larger meeting with our multi-methodology team. But you are very welkcome to have further one-to-one discussions with specific members of our team. For example, if your project needs input from a particular methodology (e.g. statistics), we will arrange for you to have a 45-minute 1:1 meeting with one of our stats team to discuss that particular aspect.

You are not limited in the number of meetings you can have with RSS advisers, so please feel free to ask us to arrange a meeting if you have specific questions or if there is a particular aspect of your funding application that you wish to discuss. But please note that our advisers get booked up very quickly - so, the earlier you come to us with your request, the more likely it is that we'll be able to schedule the meeting.

Health research proposals rarely fit neatly into one discipline. To ensure your proposal is of the highest possible quality, it is useful to have input from different perspectives. To enable this, we offer multi-methodology Q&A discussion meetings, which last one hour and are held online.

Our multi-methodology meetings offer you the opportunity to meet with a group of our advisers for an informal discussion of your research proposal. There is no set agenda. The team will be happy to answer any questions you have and offer their advice from their particular methodological perspective. At a muti-methodology Q&A meetings, you can expect to meet with four or five of our team - a statistician, a qualitative expert, a health economist and a general review. Other advisers with specific expertise may also attend, depending on your research topic.

In advance of the multi-methodology discussion meeting, your funding application will have been read by the different methodologists. They will come to the meeting ready to discuss it with you and will make considered recommendations with the aim of improving your chances of funding success. Depending on timelines, we are happy to offer several multi-methodology discussion meetings as your funding proposal progresses.

Similar to a multi-methodology Q& discussion (above) – but you don’t attend the meeting. This is where our methodologists meet to discuss your funding application (or other associated paperwork) and then summarise their discussions into written feedback. These reviews are offered when the researcher does not have any particular questions that need answering and there there is no particular need for a Q&A discussion with our team - but the researcher does have a funding application that needs reviewing and would appreciate written feedback.

When time is tight and you need a few quick comments to help you on your way, our team of methodologics will read your funding application (or other associated paperwork) and write comments directly onto the application.

Unlike our process for providing written feedback on a funding application (see "Providing written feedback on your funding application" section above), there is no internal discussion amongst our team - they simply review the application individually and post their comments onto the application form. The comments are not summarised. What you see posted onto the application is what you get.

Where time allows, we would recommend asking our team for a written summary of the feedback after an internal discussion amongst our team (as they will have looked at your application together; the feedback they provide is therefore more thorough). But comments written directly onto your application form can be useful when a tight turnaround is needed or if the application only needs a few brief comments.

If your funding body invites you to an interview, we can provide a mock interview for you. We are funded by the NIHR, and so our expertise is centred on the NIHR’s interview format – but we will try to adapt the style to fit other funding streams where necessary. By default, we will ask you to give a short presentation, which will be followed by a series of questions (20-30 minutes). A mock interview will last 1.5 to 2 hours. The first 45 minutes will be used to conduct the mock interview; the remaining time will be used to provide feedback.