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Moderated conference on impact assessment of agricultural research: May 2014

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Wed, 28 May 2014 16:03:16 +0200
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This is Mario Pareja again, responding to Message 83, from Dr. Daniel Suryadarma.



I should state my full agreement with Dr. Suryadarma about the need of quantitative data for the social evaluation of the impact of agricultural research & development & innovation (R&D&I). But I still think that some social impacts could be identified, qualitatively, by perception of the target population per se, the farmers and their families, as well as by technicians and decision makers. 



My concern about the quantitative data, in terms of the social dimension, is that of attribution. Social status is affected by a large set of variables (government employment generation programmes, non-rural income, provision of public services by the state, etc.) totally unrelated to agricultural R&D&I. So, aggregated data at the national level is usually unreliable because they introduce confounding factors. These data are not enough to evaluate research impacts. 



On the other hand, field measurements of social variables are difficult to conduct in the short time given to external evaluation exercises. (That is why I insist that research centers should have their own socio-economic units to establish baselines and monitoring programs). 



In Message 85, I describe our approach to evaluate potential social impacts of INIA-UY technologies from a qualitative point of view. It is not perfect but it helped to have an idea, a view, of the social dimension. 

  

Mario R. Pareja

Ingeniero Agrónomo, M.S., Ph.D.

independent consultant 

Paraje El Colorado, Canelones,

Uruguay 

Telephone: 598-2-3654394 or 598-98372634

e-mail: parejamr (at) gmail.com



p.s. In message 85, Estébanez (2003) was mentioned. It refers to:

Estébanez, M. E. 2003. Impacto social de la ciencia y la tecnología: estrategias para su análisis. In: RICYT: El estado de la ciencia. Principales indicadores de ciencia y tecnología iberoamericanos / interamericanos. Buenos Aires: RICYT (95-103). http://www.unsch.edu.pe/portal/oficinas/investigaciones/CTS%20-%20Estrategias%20Analisis%20de%20Impacto%20Social.pdf (200 KB).



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