Improving the Measurement of Innovation: Supporting International Comparisons

世界各地的商业领袖和公共政策制定者继续对确定可能促进和加快企业和其他经济行为者创新步伐的条件、投资、基础设施和政策高度感兴趣。对创新的调查越来越多地被用来衡量各国经济中创新的发生率，并确定驱动变量和关系。自1992年以来，欧洲联盟定期在成员国中开展社区创新调查。在经济合作与发展组织(经合组织)的许多成员国，以及最近在中国和一些非洲国家，也实施了基于独联体的调查。在美国，国家科学基金会？S新商业研发和创新调查(BRDIS)于2009年首次开展，其中包括从独联体方法中提取的商业创新问题。现在是从几个角度审查独联体办法的好时机：独联体实际衡量的问题是什么；这些衡量转移到美国和其他国家经济的情况如何才能产生强劲的统计结果，并产生可随着时间推移与使用独联体模式的其他国家的指标进行比较的指标；还需要增加新的问题。该提案概述了一个项目，该项目将对独联体和其他现有创新调查中的问题进行深入审查，并开发新的和改进的问题。该项目将在两年内进行，作为经合组织正在进行的商业研发和创新调查重新设计工作组的一部分。工作计划将包括对英语和选定语言的现有问题进行认知测试，以及在创新研究日益感兴趣的领域开发和测试新问题，例如创新无形资产的衡量。结果将是一套经过仔细测试的问题和使用指南。这些结果可用于扩大现有调查的覆盖范围，或用于新的调查，以产生具有国际和跨时间可比性的创新指标。该项目将由经合组织国家科学和技术指标专家工作组(NESTI)秘书处管理，该工作组包括欧洲联盟和美国，有来自非洲联盟、巴西、中国和俄罗斯联邦、伊比利亚-美洲科技指标网和教科文组织统计研究所的观察员。这项拟议活动的参与者将被邀请将目前在创新调查问题中应用的问题测试和方法方面的工作结合在一起，并为新工作的议程作出贡献。重要性和更广泛的意义这项工作的智力价值来自于使用前沿的认知测试和问卷编制方法以及在创新调查问题领域应用这些方法。调查设计技术还将受益于在各种经济和文化中使用的调查工具的工作。这项工作将产生一个实践社区，它将在项目结束后很长一段时间内继续下去--作为Nesti成员的一部分，得到经合组织的支持。该项目的影响将是相当大的。更好地了解创新及其影响将为旨在促进企业创新和创业的政策制定提供投入。S项目的最终报告将包括对现有问题的详细评估，并将提出新的或改进的问题，以推进创新信息的获取。对于国家科学基金会S教授来说，添加经过严格测试的问题并实施审查结构将有助于更好地理解商业调查方法。通过广泛传播，调查结果将支持关于创新在美国经济中的作用的公开辩论，并为制定更好设计的政策提供信息。该报告还将在国际上使用，包括用于发展中国家的调查项目。

Business leaders and public policymakers worldwide continue to have high interest in identifying the conditions, investments, infrastructure, and policies likely to promote and hasten the pace of innovation by businesses and other economic actors. Increasingly, surveys of innovation are being developed and used to gauge the incidence of innovation across national economies and to identify the driving variables and relationships. The European Union has run its Community Innovation Survey (CIS) among member countries regularly since 1992. CIS-based surveys have also been implemented in many of the member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and, more recently, in China and some African countries. In the United States, the National Science Foundation?s new Business R&D and Innovation Survey (BRDIS), first fielded in 2009, includes questions on business innovation drawn from the CIS approach. This is an opportune time to review the CIS approach from several perspectives: what are the CIS questions actually measuring; how well can these measures, transferred to the U.S and other national economies, yield robust statistical results and produce indicators that can be compared over time and with those of other countries using the CIS model; and what might also usefully be measured were new questions to be added. Project DescriptionThe proposal outlines a project to conduct an in-depth review of the questions in the CIS and other existing innovation surveys and to develop new and improved questions. The project would be conducted over two years, as part of an ongoing OECD taskforce on business R&D and innovation survey re-design.The work program would include cognitive testing of existing questions in English and selected languages, as well as the development and testing of new questions in areas of growing interest in the study of innovation, such as the measurement of intangible assets for innovation. The result would be a set of carefully tested questions and guidelines for their use. These results could be used to extend the coverage of existing surveys, or for new surveys, to produce internationally and inter-temporally comparable indicators of innovation. The project would be managed by the Secretariat of the OECD Working Party of National Experts on Science and Technology Indicators (NESTI) -- which includes the European Union and the United States and has observers from the African Union, Brazil, China, and the Russian Federation, the Ibero-American Network on Science and Technology Indicators (RICYT) and the UNESCO Institute of Statistics (UIS). Participants in this proposed activity would be invited to bring together present work on question testing and methodology, as applied to questions in innovation surveys, and to contribute to an agenda for new work.Importance and Broader SignificanceThe intellectual merit of this work arises from the use of leading edge cognitive testing and questionnaire development methods and the application of such methods in the domain of innovation survey questions. Survey design techniques will also benefit from work on a survey instrument that is used in a wide variety of economies and cultures. The work will give rise to a community of practice that will continue well beyond the end of the project -- as part of the NESTI membership, supported by the OECD. The impact of the project would be considerable. A better understanding of innovation and its impacts will provide input to policy development directed at fostering business innovation and entrepreneurship. The project?s final report will include detailed assessments of existing questions and will offer new or improved questions to advance the capture of information on innovation. For NSF?s BRDIS, adding rigorously tested questions and implementing a reviewed structure will contribute a better understanding of business survey methods. And with wide dissemination, survey results will support public debate of the role of innovation in the U.S. economy and inform the development of better designed policies. The report will be also available for use internationally, including for survey programs in developing countries.