Public managers lack feedback on the effectiveness of public investments, policies, and programs instituted to build and use research capacity. Numerous reports rank countries on global performance on innovation and competitiveness, but the highly globalized data does not distinguish country contributions from global ones. We suggest improving upon global reports by removing globalized measures and combining a reliable set of national indicators into an index. We factor analyze 14 variables for 172 countries from 2013 to 2021. Two factors emerge, one for raw or core research capacity and the other indicating the wider context of governance. Analysis shows convergent validity within the two factors and divergent validity between them. Nations rank differently between capacity, governance context, and the product of the two. Ranks also vary as a function of the chosen aggregation method. Finally, as a test of the predictive validity of the capacity index, a regression analysis was implemented predicting national citation strength. Policymakers and analysts may find stronger feedback from this approach to quantifying national research strength.

翻译：公共管理者缺乏对旨在建立和运用研究能力的公共投资、政策及项目成效的反馈。众多报告对各国在创新与竞争力方面的全球表现进行排名，但高度全球化的数据无法区分国家贡献与全球贡献。我们建议通过剔除全球化指标、将一组可靠的国家指标整合成指数来改进全球报告。我们对2013年至2021年间172个国家的14个变量进行因子分析，发现两个因子：一个代表原始或核心研究能力，另一个反映更广泛的治理环境。分析表明，两个因子内部具有收敛效度，因子之间则具有区分效度。各国在能力、治理环境及两者乘积上的排名各不相同，排名也因所选聚合方法而异。最后，作为能力指数预测效度的检验，我们实施回归分析以预测国家引文强度。政策制定者和分析师或许能从这种量化国家研究实力的方法中获得更有力的反馈。