بکارگیری فرآیند تحلیل سلسله مراتبی برای ارزیابی پروژه های "تحقیق و توسعه" ملی هسته ای: مورد کره

Researchers, institutes, and government involved in research and development (R&D) are faced with the problem of performing R&D project evaluations. As a real-world case of evaluation, we elicited and reproduced the evaluation process of the national nuclear R&D projects, using a specific case study of Korea for the year 2001. In the methodology, the analytic hierarchy process is employed to evaluate and rank the selected nuclear R&D projects which have a wide range of evaluation objectives and characteristics. This article presents a derivation of a wide range of objectives, evaluation viewpoints from research professionals and evaluators, and evaluation criteria. To structure and quantify the criteria and research performance of some selected projects, we elicited strategic objectives, then refined and structured them into a hierarchy. The method and implications can be easily understood and applied by practitioners since they follow the standard practice of evaluation and relative comparisons of performance using evaluation procedures.

Agencies participating in national research and development (R&D) programs have been diversified and investments also increased during the 1990s. Thus, comprehensive coordination at the government level became necessary, to include strategic investment and resource allocation, promote inter-connections among research programs, and prevent duplication of investment in national R&D sources (Ministry of Science and Technology, 2000a). Moreover, the performance evaluation of any national R&D program is considered as an imperative for a government organization. The evaluation of the research output, however, has probably had less of an impact in the literature than it deserves, in part because much of the most detailed and valuable work is not easily obtainable (Georghiou and Roessner, 2000). In general, the purpose of evaluating national R&D projects is to suggest directions and strategies of national R&D programs at government level, to make balanced investments, and strengthen national R&D. The problem of R&D project evaluation, however, requires practical and efficient decision-making tools to support reasonable investment programs. In addition, many institutions and organizations have focused on R&D and its results.

As the demand for evaluation accelerates, evaluation issues now regarded as important will become increasingly significant in the coming years. Moreover, policymakers or project evaluators will need improved analytic tools to enhance decision-making. A successful nuclear technology development can be attained by the creation of an environment capable of stimulating sustainable creativity and technological development within research institutes, universities, and government sectors. Though plain scoring methods have been used in quantitative evaluation processes in the past, a more analytical technique, capable of identifying the overall evaluation needs, is essential in the present day. Our study suggests that the AHP provides a convenient and effective method for evaluating R&D research performance and proves to be a good aid for structuring an evaluation process as well as offering a synthetic framework in which evaluators can carry out tradeoffs among immeasurable criteria without having to rely on a single measure of performance.