Identifying criteria for public agricultural research decisions

Well defined criteria are critical for making complex decisions. Yet a review of the literature shows that criteria selection has not received major attention. This paper presents a framework for guiding practitioners in developing and structuring criteria for decision making on public-sector research. First, an initial list of criteria is generated based on objectives, available resources, context, and clients' needs. Second, the relevancy of the criteria is judged with respect to the research alternatives to be evaluated. Third, the availability of data to apply the criteria is evaluated. The principle is to narrow down a broad list of criteria to the point where the research alternatives can be characterised by a minimum number of criteria. The procedure is illustrated with the case of Chile's agricultural biotechnology programme. The paper concludes with a discussion on the benefits of the approach and the issues to be addressed in future applications. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.