From our researchers
The Virginia Commonwealth University School of Nursing’s Office of Research develops and maintains systems that support the school’s strategic research initiatives and faculty members’ research programs. We work to:
- Enhance research productivity
- Increase the intensity of the research environment
- Facilitate the development of research activities
- Assist faculty and doctoral students in securing and managing internal and external funding to support research and training activities
The Office of Research houses the Center for Biobehavioral Clinical Research, which supports a robust program of innovative and nationally renowned research focused on biobehavioral symptom science. Our research consistently ranks in the top 30 percent of nursing schools nationwide in National Institutes of Health funding.
Our office provides support services through three functional units:
Research administration
This unit is responsible for providing administrative support for all research programs and research-related groups, which enables faculty members to focus their energies on developing and implementing their science. Specific services include:
- Ensuring that all university, state and federal training and other regulatory requirements are met
- Providing pre-award grant preparation and submission services
- Facilitating effective post-award grant management processes
- Supporting faculty members in the preparation and submission of research-related progress, regulatory, fiscal and other reports
- Coordinating all research-related events
- Providing support to graduate and undergraduate nursing students interested in pursuing research
- Maintaining a database of all research-related activities
- Assisting investigators in connecting with appropriate research-related resources
Research support services
This unit offers a full range of project management, data management and biostatistics analysis services through the three components below to support a variety of research and clinical data for School of Nursing faculty. Services are available to others for a fee.
Project management/regulatory affairs services
- Drafting Institutional Review Board applications and supporting the electronic submission process
- Facilitating subject recruitment and retention
- Helping with participant consent and enrollment, and maintaining participant databases
- Conducting data collection processes for clinical, biological and other data
- Assisting with data management including transcription of qualitative date and data entry/quality control
- Assisting with preparation of reports
Data management services
- Assisting customers with developing plans for data management strategies and relevant budgeting for grant applications
- Creating, testing and disseminating data collection tools
- Creating data collection tracking systems
- Building and maintaining databases on a secure SON server
- Working with project personnel to train data collectors and monitor the data collection process
- Conducting data entry by electronic transfer, scanned forms or importing procedures
- Completing data checks, monitoring, and managing missing data and other reports and data files
Biostatistics services
- Providing advice on the choice of an appropriate experimental design or analysis plan
- Preparing appropriate sections for grant, including sample size justification, power analysis and analysis plan
- Developing appropriate randomization and stratification procedures
- Preparing analysis-ready data sets by merging individual components of a relational database
- Scoring scales and subscales
- Reconfiguring data formats and creating derived data from various sources
- Conducting the analysis of data from completed studies or from other data sets
- Assisting in the preparation of grants, manuscripts and presentations
Biobehavioral research laboratory
Our biobehavioral research laboratory is available to all School of Nursing faculty, as well as other VCU faculty and non-VCU individuals on a fee-for-service basis.
VCU research resources
- VCU Center for Clinical and Translational Research
- VCU Office of Research and Innovation
- VCU Office of Research and Innovation – Conflicts of Interest
- Institutional Review Board
- VCU Board of Visitors Policy on Institutes and Centers
- VCU Postdoctoral Policy
- VCU Across the Spectrum
- Undergraduate Research at VCU
