What metrics? On the utility of measuring the performance of policy research: An illustrative case and alternative from Employment and Social Development Canada
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract This article examines the state of performance measurement of policy research in government. The article observes that, to date, government policy research activities have seldom been the object of performance measurement, a factor we ascribe to the relative unsuitability of existing models rooted in a focus on outputs and outcomes, often at the expense of relationships and networks. In reference to the literature and the case study, the article proposes that existing performance measurement models are ill‐suited to the task of assessing policy research performance. As a result, the article proposes that a purpose‐built model may be needed to achieve this objective. Such a model, the Sphere of Influence of Research Policy model, is provided as an illustration.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.035 | 0.056 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.007 | 0.013 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.018 | 0.028 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.021 | 0.005 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.008 |
| Research integrity | 0.004 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".