Question Scans

Question Scans

Question 14: By what criteria might research and innovation in the public and private post-secondary sector be measured?

Overview

The objective of this question scan was to locate research of potential relevance to the assessment of research and innovation in post-secondary institutions. The topic was divided into two related questions:

  1.  What criteria might be used to effectively measure research and innovation in post-secondary environments?
  2.  What are the strengths and limitations of the various methods?

An initial search employing a broad range of search terms in four appropriate databases yielded 303 articles potentially relevant to the stated questions. Subsequent examination of article abstracts reduced the number to 146. In many of the reviewed articles the measurement of research and innovation productivity was incorporated into examinations of methods used for larger, institutional assessments, for example, Banta (1994), and Brennan and Shaw (2000). While the majority of articles came from the United States there is ample evidence that the European community has recently invested a great deal of time and effort in evaluating research, for example, Westerheijden (1997), Boffo, Kaukonen, and Opdal (1999) and Morgan (2001).

Question A
The literature indicates that universities and colleges increasingly find external influences like social and economic values carrying greater weight in academic life, for example Brennan and Shah’s (2000) Quality assessment and institutional change: experiences from 14 countries. In general, most journal articles address the notion of evaluation by focussing on a particular assessment model. While there is an ample number of articles reporting on the various models being applied to institutional assessment, there is little quantitative research directly addressing the validity of criteria being employed by individual assessment models.

Question B
References to assessment criteria are most often found in articles examining a particular evaluative model. In most articles relating to Question B, a model is defined and then examined for effectiveness within a given academic setting. The particular criterion used in the various models is generally not described in the article abstract. It is therefore difficult to determine the strengths or limitations of these criteria simply by surveying abstracts.

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