Design of a Battery of Indicators of Social Appropriation of Science and Technology in Colombia

Author: Tania Arboleda

The Colombian Observatory of Science and Technology recently begun a project to design a battery of indicators of Social Appropriation of Science and Technology (SAST) to respond to the need that the Administrative Department of Science, Technology & Innovation of Colombia has to advance processes of measuring and evaluating these initiatives. The notion of SAST is defined as “a process of understanding and intervention of the relations between technoscience and society which is constructed based upon the active participation of the various social groups that generate knowledge”. The methodological path that is being followed to complete this purpose has the following steps: (1) definition of a ‘universe’ of types of initiatives that respond to SAST – it is expected that this universe also includes initiatives not funded by the government; (2) identification of information needs based upon a review of policy documents, academic literature on SAST, and interviews to policy makers, researchers and diverse agents participating in the initiatives; (3) Preliminary design of the structure and content of the battery of indicators; (4) Workshops to validate the preliminary design with representative groups of actors participating in initiatives (public or non public funded), policy managers, researchers; (4) a work to prioritize a baseline of indicators to be initially measured, with the understanding that the remained proposed indicators also could be used in context based initiatives as a means to evaluate their processes, outputs or impacts; (5) Design of a methodological path to the information collecting and construction of the indicators; (4) Definition of the datasheet of each indicator. It is expected that the project ends on March 2016. In the paper we expect to present the final battery of indicators and some of the challenges presented during the defining process.