A Strategy for Assessing Science Behavioral and Social Research on Aging (2007) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
1 The Purpose of the Study
1 The Purpose of the Study
Pages 7-19
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 7... ...
Each federal science agency promotes scientific progress toward these objectives in the areas of its mission responsibilities. This is done most obviously by providing funds for research and its infrastructure, including the education and training of succeeding cohorts of researchers; by organizing and setting rules for the external groups that advise on worthy research investments; and by setting research priorities and making choices among specific research programs and projects.
|
From page 8... ...
Because society has limited resources to support scientific activities, assessing scientific progress and setting priorities are perennial practical components of national science policy decision making. Perennial questions arise, too, about matching agency funding practices with the conditions perceived to be most likely to lead to program or project success in terms of contributions to scientific knowledge and societal objectives.
|
From page 9... ...
to assess the progress and prospects of behavioral and social science research on the processes of aging at both the individual and societal levels. Specifically, BSR asked the National Academies to organize this study with two major goals: "to explore methodologies for assessing the progress and vitality of areas of behavioral and social science research on aging .
|
From page 10... ...
that are used for assessing the progress and potential of these fields and for informing research policy decisions about them. We have therefore collapsed much of the discussion of both elements of the charge into the treatment of assessment methodologies, while separately discussing bodies of knowledge specifically addressed to factors deemed to contribute to scientific advances, especially as they may pertain to research on aging.
|
From page 11... ...
The questions raised by our charge arise across the sciences. For example, many of the questions posed by BSR also arise in the conduct of industrially funded research, have been posed by industrial research and development managers (Industrial Research Institute, 1999)
|
From page 12... ...
We have concentrated on some widely applicable techniques for assessing the past performance and progress of scientific fields and the prospects for scientific progress, and on frequently discussed variants or alternatives to these techniques. We have also conducted a pilot study using some new and promising bibliometric techniques, customized to correspond to substantive areas of research supported by BSR.
|
From page 13... ...
Priority setting has a prospective focus. Working in a decisionmaking context shaped by legislative and executive branch mandates, budget allocations, political imperatives, stakeholder interests, and inputs from the affected scientific communities, agency program managers consider how best to distribute their programs' available resources among many possible lines of science to maximize attainment of the program's goals, such as the advancement of scientific knowledge and human well-being.
|
From page 14... ...
multilevel interactions among psychological, physiological, social, and cultural levels." In pursuit of its objectives, "BSR supports research, training, and the development of research resources and methodologies to produce a scientific knowledge base for maximizing active life and health expectancy. This knowledge base is required for informed and effective public policy, professional practice, and everyday life.
|
From page 15... ...
Research agencies often engage in serious efforts at priority setting, but comparative assessments of lines of research within or across scientific fields are usually approached indirectly or implicitly. For example, the National Research Council has often been asked to advise federal agencies on criteria for making such assessments (e.g., Institute of Medicine, 1998, 2004; Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy, 2004; National Research Council, 2005c)
|
From page 16... ...
Members of scientific communities sometimes disagree about federal agency research priorities, as evidenced by disagreements concerning the budgetary priorities that should be accorded to the superconducting supercollider, the relative emphasis in energy research between discovering new fuel sources or improving energy-saving technologies, and the relative priority of manned and unmanned space exploration. However, research communities typically do not try to resolve such disagreements by applying formal assessment methodologies, such as those of benefit-cost or decision analysis.
|
From page 17... ...
BSR is seeking more systematic methods for such assessments, in part because of a judgment that its interdisciplinary advisory panels have not responded to the issue of comparative assessment of research fields with assessments that differentiated among fields according to the likelihood of returns from research investments. When such differentiation is needed, BSR wants valid ways to justify its recommendations about program priorities and proposal selections to senior NIH officials, Congress, and affected stakeholder and research communities.
|
From page 18... ...
It considers what is known about the nature and processes of scientific progress and about the links from societal progress to societal benefit, the variety of kinds of progress that science makes, the factors that contribute to scientific discovery, and the implications of each of the above for priority setting among scientific fields. Chapter 5 examines the major methods available for assessing scientific progress in a general framework that distinguishes methods that emphasize the use of quantitative measures (analytic techniques, such as the use of bibliometric indicators and the application of decision analysis)
|
From page 19... ...
Generally, these positions include responsibility for developing intra-agency program and budget plans; maintaining contact with relevant scientific com munities; overseeing proposal review and selection processes; endorsing, modifying, or rejecting recommendations made by proposal review panels and justifying these choices to higher organizational levels; and identifying research initiatives.
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.