MonitoringReport2005 Contribution of Research to National Goals
 

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The link between research and economic and social development goals is difficult to establish, as contributions occur over a long period of time following completion of the research output and the linkages can be quite indirect. This section looks at key research output indicators to see how well positioned tertiary education research is to contribute to national goals in various ways.

Contribution to new and future knowledge

One of the long-term contributions of tertiary education research to national goals is through expanding the body of new knowledge through basic research. The 2004 Statistics New Zealand Research and Development Survey shows that around two-thirds of university-based research expenditure is in the basic research category1, compared with about half for Crown Research Institutes and only 5 percent for private research establishments.

Looking at research expenditure in terms of research types, universities contribute to about half of the country’s total expenditure on basic research and a quarter of the total expenditure on applied research.


Expenditure on types of research by sector 2004

Source: Statistics New Zealand, Research and Development Survey 2004

Contribution to economic and social development, Māori development and environmental management

The TES identifies four critical national areas where the tertiary education sector should be contributing in terms of research and knowledge creation. These are economic development, social development, Māori development and environmental management.

Understanding the contribution of research to specific national goals requires careful analysis of individual research outputs. One such analysis for social science is referred to in the accompanying text box.

At a more general level, it is possible to look at the balance of published papers across broad subject domains as follows:

  • Economic: engineering, economics and business and computer science
  • Medicine and health: clinical medicine, psychology/psychiatry, neuroscience, pharmacology and immunology
  • Social: social sciences, humanities, education and law
  • Agriculture and biology: plant and animal science, biology and biochemistry, agricultural sciences, molecular biology and genetics and microbiology
  • Environmental: geosciences and ecology and environment
  • Other: chemistry, physics, mathematics, multidisciplinary and astrophysics.

Data from a Ministry of Research, Science and Technology study of indexed research papers2 from the tertiary sector shows that the largest growth in numbers is in the area of medicine and health. There has been steady growth in subjects classified under economic, agriculture and biology, and environmental. The number of papers in social disciplines has remained the same.


Published indexed research papers from the tertiary education sector by general domain 1997 and 2003

Source:Ministry of Research, Science and Technology, 2003 Bibliometric Study

Contribution of social science research to government Knowledge Theme Areas
The government has identified seven Knowledge Theme Areas of strategic interest for social policy knowledge investment. A recent paper by Charles Crothers3 maps the titles of social science research outputs evaluated for the 2003 PBRF to the Knowledge Theme Areas, amongst other things.
Crothers found that 24 percent of social science research outputs could be mapped directly to one of the Knowledge Theme Areas. The largest contribution was in the areas of work and knowledge and knowledge and skills.

Social science outputs assessed in the 2003 PBRF mapped to social policy Knowledge Theme Areas
Knowledge Theme AreasPercentage of outputs
The changing nature of work6.4%
Developing human capabilities – knowledge and skills6.6%
Disparities between groups – how to change the picture1.8%
Enhancing positive social outcomes – developing risk and protective factors1.6%
Measuring and understanding social well-being2.2%
Social connectedness1.5%
Social and cultural identities3.2%
Total mapped to Knowledge Theme Areas23.6%

TEI approaches to contributing to national goals

The analysis of profiles found that the link of research to national goals is not addressed in most profiles. This is not to say that TEI research is not contributing to national goals but, rather, there is not an explicit process for linking research priorities to national goals within the institutions.

 

1 Category definitions are not comparable with the 2002 survey results published in the Baseline Monitoring Report (↑)

2 Using the Thomson-ISI National Citation Report. (↑)

3 Charles Crothers, Mapping the Social Sciences: characteristics of New Zealand academic social sciences research outputs, 2006. (↑)

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