Hosted by the SMDM Decision Psychology SIG
The SMDM Decision Psychology Special Interest Group is excited to announce the inaugural Zikmund-Fisher Decision Psychology Pilot Award Program, which is designed to build connections and grow the community of decision psychologists and related social scientists within SMDM.
Awards from the Z-F Pilot Award Program support new, primary data collections related to applications of decision psychology methods to patient and/or clinician medical decision making. Data may be from experiments, surveys, interviews, observations, or similar. Preference will be given to proposals that address important practical questions grounded in specific health contexts, ideally with immediate real-world implications. E.g.,
- randomized tests of communication formats for decision-relevant medical / risk data,
- comparative tests of alternate framings or presentations of medical decision options
- assessments of associations between patient or clinician cognitive characteristics with medical decisions
Primary outcome measurements should emphasize proximal outcomes such as information recall, contrasting of options, perceptions, emotions, behavioral intentions, preferences, etc. Note that the Z-F Pilot Awards are not intended for tests of shared decision making interventions, interventions to affect the degree of patient involvement in care, etc., although studies testing design decisions for such interventions might be appropriate.
All applicants must submit a 1-page Letter of Intent (due October 1, 2026) outlining (a) the research question, (b) a discussion of its significance, and (c) a very preliminary outline of the possible study design (including data collection methodology).
While Z-F Pilot Award awardees must be SMDM members at the time of their full application and for the length of the award, letters of intent are strongly encouraged from non-members, on the understanding that they will join SMDM if they are selected to submit a full application. Preference will be given to (a) psychologists and related social scientists at any career stage who are making a new pivot towards applied medical decision making research, (b) clinician investigators establishing new collaborations with social scientists to study medical decision making issues, and (c) student / trainee / early career researchers in medical decision making. Awardees may not have previously received a Z-F Pilot award.
Both to improve the proposed research and to build the decision psychology community within SMDM, awardees will be required to present their research design plans, instruments, etc. to a Decision Psychology SIG meeting for constructive feedback before data collection begins.
Applicants may request up to USD$8,000 (with a preference for “right sized” applications vs. requests for the maximum amount) to be spent within 12 months. Award funds may be used for direct study data collection and curation costs, including participant incentives, online samples, printing / mailing, transcription, etc., as well as staff / student effort that is directly related to data collection. Once data collection is complete, awardees may also apply for secondary funds to reimburse them for up to USD$2,000 for article publication charges and up to USD$2,000 for expenses for travel to an SMDM annual meeting to present the funded work.
Selection Committee Members:
- Brian Zikmund-Fisher (University of Michigan)
- Victoria Shaffer (University of Missouri)
- 3 to-be-determined additional senior members of the SMDM Decision Psychology Special Interest Group
Important Dates
- Letter of Intent (1-page) due: October 1, 2026
- Notification of finalists: on or before October 15, 2026
- Full applications due: November 15, 2026
- Initial awards: January 2027