Deadline: February 8, 2023
Purpose: The Sidney W. and Janet R. Bijou Grant provides support for doctoral student research designed to incorporate behavioral principles to advance our understanding of human development.
Grants Available: For each academic year, the endowment may provide up to five US$12,000 grants. The amount awarded will vary, but will not exceed $12,000. All expenses must be clearly detailed in the proposed budget statement. The SABA Board of Directors reserves the right not to award any grant in a given year.
Additional Information: This grant will be provided to doctoral students in departments of psychology, education, or another discipline that supports research in behavioral development. Developmental concepts could include chronological and developmental age, neurobiological and genetic factors associated with development, or the impact of developmental trajectories on adult behavior. While intervention research could be appropriate, the primary research questions (independent variables) must be related to developmental and behavior analytic principles. Examples include: changes in reinforcer preference with age; effectiveness of verbal behavior interventions in children of differing developmental ages; the development of second languages or bilingualism; equivalence relations; delay discounting; neurobiological correlates or interventions; the role of epigenetic influences; environment-gene-behavior interactions.
While the goal must be to understand child development, the experimental model may involve laboratory animals. The primary purpose may not be to overcome deficits or challenges associated with a behavioral disorder or developmental disability (e.g., ADHD, autism), independent of a fundamental developmental principle.
Grant recipients will be publicly recognized at the SABA Awards Ceremony at the ABAI Annual Convention and in Inside Behavior Analysis.
Dr. Sidney W. and Janet R. Bijou funded a substantial endowment to SABA in 1996 to establish this grant program; a second donation was made in 2003. Dr. Bijou passed away on June 11, 2009, at the age of 100. Click here to learn more about the fund or visit Dr. Bijou's website for information about Sidney and Janet Bijou.
Grant Application Details
Review of Applications: The ABAI Science Board administers the grant process, and the SABA Board of Directors chooses the grant recipients.
Eligibility Criteria:
(1) Applicants must have at least one full academic year remaining in the program and sufficient time to complete the project after the grant application deadline.
(2) Applicants must be enrolled or have been accepted in a doctoral program in a department of psychology, education, behavioral science, or an allied discipline in which there is a sufficient number of behaviorally oriented faculty members to supervise research in child development.
(3) The primary criteria for the grant are the quality of the application and the applicant’s commitment to the study and research of child development from a behavior analytic perspective.
(4) Applicants may not apply for a Bijou Grant and an Innovative Student Research Grant in the same year.
Conditions of Award: Grant recipients agree to provide a brief report on what the grant was used for, along with an outline of expenditures. This report is due to the SABA Board by April 1 of the following year.
Previous Recipients
The SABA Sidney W. and Janet R. Bijou Grant was first awarded in 1998. From 1998 to 2003, a single award was given annually. From 2003 to 2012, two grants were given annually. In 2014, a single grant of double the amount of previous grants was awarded. The list of previous grant recipients is available here. Note that awardees prior to 2018 were funded under different program descriptions.