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高度关注确定可能促进和加快企业和其他经济行为体创新步伐的条件、投资、基础设施和政策。 正在越来越多地开展创新调查，并用于衡量各国经济体的创新发生率，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进行共同体创新调查。 经济合作与发展组织（经合组织）的许多成员国也进行了基于CIS的调查，最近在中国和一些非洲国家也进行了调查。 在美国，国家科学基金会？2009年首次进行的新的商业研发和创新调查（BRDIS）包括从CIS方法中得出的关于商业创新的问题。& 这是一个从几个角度审查独联体方法的好时机：独联体问题实际上测量了什么;这些措施，转移到美国和其他国家的经济，如何能够产生强大的统计结果，并产生可以随着时间的推移进行比较的指标，并与使用独联体模式的其他国家的指标进行比较;还有什么可能是有用的测量是要添加的新问题。 该提案概述了一个项目，对CIS和其他现有创新调查中的问题进行深入审查，并制定新的和改进的问题。 该项目将作为经合组织正在进行的企业研发和创新调查重新设计工作组的一部分，进行两年多的时间，工作计划将包括用英语和选定语言对现有问题进行认知测试，以及在创新研究中日益感兴趣的领域（如创新无形资产的衡量）开发和测试新问题。&其结果将是一套经过仔细测试的问题及其使用准则。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，以编制国际和跨时间可比的创新指标。该项目将由经合组织国家科学和技术指标专家工作队秘书处管理-该工作队包括欧洲联盟和美国，并有来自非洲联盟、巴西、中国和俄罗斯联邦、伊比利亚-美洲科学和技术指标网和教科文组织统计研究所的观察员。 将邀请参加这项拟议活动的人员将目前关于创新调查问题的问题测试和方法的工作汇集在一起，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领先的认知测试和问卷编制方法，并将这些方法应用于创新调查问题领域。调查设计技术也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，在项目结束后将继续存在-作为经合组织支持的国家科学技术指标成员的一部分。该项目的影响将是巨大的。更好地了解创新及其影响，将为旨在促进企业创新和创业精神的政策制定提供投入。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，以促进对创新信息的获取。为了国家科学基金会？的BRDIS，增加严格测试的问题和实施审查结构将有助于更好地了解商业调查方法。 随着广泛传播，调查结果将支持公众对创新在美国经济中的作用进行辩论，并为制定更好的政策提供信息。该报告还将在国际上提供使用，包括用于发展中国家的调查方案。

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.