Investigation of Evaluating Indicators for Science, Technology and Innovation in the Agricultural Research, Education and Extension Organization

The present study aims to explain and elucidate the evaluating indicators ofscience, technology in Iranian Agricultural Research, Education and Extension Organization based on the analysis of high level documents and Persian and non-Persian articles relevent to activities of the organization that have been approved by the experts.

For this research, in the first stage, the Meta-synthesis was used. Out of 108 documents related to the research topic, 26 were analyzed. To analyse the indices obtained during the process, a survey of experts using the Delphi technique was used. Thus, the present research method is triangulation mixed method.

In total, 8 main criteria including research and technology, products from technological research, genetic resources and biodiversity management, education, extension, human capital, financial and infrastructure resources along with 242 indicators for the evaluation of science and technology, were confirmed by the experts.

In addition to the conventional indicators in high level documens, the science and technology indicators of the Organization derived from the Delphi study based on special two-tier of "products from technological research" and "genetic reserve and biodiversity management" demonstrated the highest level of consensus among experts and can serve as the indicators for assessing agricultural science and technology.