Developing an index of national research capacity

We test the feasibility of incorporating broad social, political, and governance indicators with standard metrics as a way to enrich assessment of national research capacity. We factor analyze two sets of variables for 174 countries from 2012 to 2021, one being traditional measures associated with national science and technology capacity, such as spending, and a second being broader social, political, and governance measures, such as academic freedom. As expected, two factors emerge, one for raw or “core” research capacity and the other indicating the wider governance context. Further analysis shows convergent validity within the two factors and divergent validity between them. The analysis also quantifies the contribution of each indicator to each factor. Nations rank differently for each factor and also when combined. Ranks vary as a function of the chosen aggregation method. As a test of the predictive validity of the capacity index, we find both factors to be associated with country-level field-weighted citation indices. Policymakers and analysts may find useful feedback from this approach to quantifying national research strength.