The primary goal of the peer review of research grant proposals is to evaluate their quality for the funding agency. An important secondary goal is to provide constructive feedback to applicants for their resubmissions. However, little is known about whether review feedback achieves this goal. In this paper, we present a multi-methods analysis of responses from grant applicants regarding their perceptions of the effectiveness and appropriateness of peer review feedback they received from grant submissions. Overall, 56–60% of applicants determined the feedback to be appropriate (fair, well-written, and well-informed), although their judgments were more favorable if their recent application was funded. Importantly, independent of funding success, women found the feedback better written than men, and more white applicants found the feedback to be fair than non-white applicants. Also, perceptions of a variety of biases were specifically reported in respondents’ feedback. Less than 40% of applicants found the feedback to be very useful in informing their research and improving grantsmanship and future submissions. Further, negative perceptions of the appropriateness of review feedback were positively correlated with more negative perceptions of feedback usefulness. Importantly, respondents suggested that highly competitive funding pay-lines and poor inter-panel reliability limited the usefulness of review feedback. Overall, these results suggest that more effort is needed to ensure that appropriate and useful feedback is provided to all applicants, bolstering the equity of the review process and likely improving the quality of resubmitted proposals.

研究资助提案同行评审的主要目标是为资助机构评估其质量。一个重要的次要目标是为申请人重新提交提供建设性的反馈。然而，关于评论反馈是否实现了这一目标，我们知之甚少。在本文中，我们对资助申请者关于他们对从资助申请中收到的同行评审反馈的有效性和适当性的看法的回复进行了多方法分析。总体而言，56-60% 的申请人认为反馈是适当的（公平、写得好、消息灵通），但如果他们最近的申请获得资助，他们的判断会更有利。重要的是，独立于资金成功，女性发现反馈比男性写得更好，与非白人申请人相比，更多的白人申请人认为反馈是公平的。此外，受访者的反馈中特别报告了对各种偏见的看法。不到 40% 的申请者认为反馈对他们的研究和改进资助和未来提交非常有用。此外，对评论反馈适当性的负面看法与对反馈有用性的更多负面看法呈正相关。重要的是，受访者表示，竞争激烈的资金支付线和较差的小组间可靠性限制了审查反馈的有用性。总的来说，这些结果表明需要付出更多努力来确保向所有申请人提供适当和有用的反馈，