Implementing the Government Performance and Results Act for Research A Status Report (2001) / Chapter Skim
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1. The Challenge of Evaluating Research
1. The Challenge of Evaluating Research
Pages 7-16
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From page 7... ...
Federal funds support a total of some $20.2 billions worth of basic research in 1998; about half that amount goes to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) .2 About $50 billion more is spent on applied research and development, of which a large portion is devoted to the procurement and testing of weapons systems.
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4The National Academies publish Beyond Discovery: The Path from Research to Human Benefit, a series of articles that describe applications of basic research that could not have been anticipated when the original research was conducted. The series, published four to six times per year, is available on the National Academies Web site, www.nationalacademies.org/beyonddiscovery.
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From page 9... ...
Congress's desire for simplified and understandable information about research programs is reflected in the act's requirement of planning and reporting mechanisms. Federal agencies that support research have moved by stages toward full implementation of GPRA over the last 4 years, with the central objective of providing a regular accounting of their research activities.
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From page 10... ...
The remainder of this chapter summarizes COSEPUP's first report on the issue of evaluating federal research programs. This report entitled, E~aluatin~g Federal Research Programs: Research and the Go~ern~men~t Performance and Results Act recommends that federal research programs be evaluated using a process called expert review and the criteria of quality, relevance, and leadership.
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From page 11... ...
That is, they are able to list their performance goals in quantifiable terms ancl report on their progress toward those goals by using specific metrics ancl time lines. For research activities in science ancl engineering, however, especially those involving basic research, it is difficult or impossible to know the practical outcomes of activities in acivance or to measure their progress annually with quantifiable metrics or milestones.
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For other research programs, progress toward specified practical outcomes can be measured annually with milestones and other quantitative approaches common in industry and some parts of the federal government.
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Review of the quality of research via peer review is the most common form of expert review. Peer review is applied throughout the scientific and the work of laboratories and individuals.
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User communities are taken to consist of those for whom agency research is intended to be relevant, including members of the academic and private sectors. For example, federally supported health research is assumed to benefit patients, medical practitioners, pharmaceutical companies, and other groups that use the results of research to develop new therapies and new products and to reap the benefits of new cures.
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From page 15... ...
Review can be accomplished by the technique of international benchmarking; an exercise carried out by a panel of non-US and US experts whose technical expertise and international perspective qualify them to assess the standing of a research program or an entire field. They are asked to assess the relative position of US research today, the expected relative position of US research in the future, and the key factors influencing relative US performance.
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From page 16... ...
Chapter 4 provides the panel's general conclusions and recommendations. 7National Science Foundation, Report of the Senior Assessment Panel of the International Assessment of the US Mathematical Sciences, Arlington, VA, March 1998.
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