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case, additional guidance on the borderline between research and healthcare and on the treatment of clinical trials might be supplied. Where university hospitals are administratively and financially very closely integrated with teaching establishments (see Chapter 3, Section 3.7.1), they might be treated together for the purposes of R&D surveys/data compilation. If they are separate units with separate accounts and administrations, they might receive a special questionnaire directed to government hospitals (see below) or a normal R&D questionnaire. For hospitals in the government and nonprofit sectors and university hospitals (or parts thereof) which are not integrated with teaching establishments, a special survey may be useful. If this is not possible, the normal R&D questionnaire may be used.

450.Whatever survey approach is taken, care should be taken to ensure coherent treatment of R&D in units/projects under joint management by two or more entities, by persons receiving two salaries from different entities and by persons working at hospitals but employed by other institutions.

7.4.Working with respondents

7.4.1.Encouraging co-operation

451.The survey questionnaire must include a minimum number of basic questions on the R&D activity in order to produce harmonised and comparable statistics for transmission to international organisations. Owing to the response burden, the questionnaire should be as simple and short as possible, logically structured and have clear definitions and instructions. Generally, the longer the questionnaire, the lower the unit and item response rates. For smaller units, a simplified survey questionnaire could be used. It is highly recommended to test draft questionnaires on a sample of respondents. Work has started to develop a harmonised OECD questionnaire for R&D surveys in the business enterprise sector.

452.Once the survey respondent has been identified, it is necessary to identify the best person to fill in the questionnaire. In R&D surveys, he/she is usually in the accounting or personnel unit or in the R&D unit. Each has advantages and disadvantages. The R&D manager can identify the R&D of the unit according to Frascati Manual norms better but may not be able to supply exact figures. The accountant or personnel manager has the exact figures, but may not refer exactly to R&D as defined in the Frascati Manual. In bigger units, the co-operation of all three types of respondents is essential. Nevertheless, one person must co-ordinate the response. It is often useful to send the questionnaire to the person who responded the previous year. If this is not known, surveys should be addressed to the managing director. In big, complex institutions like universities and large enterprises or groups of enterprises,

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it is useful to identify in advance the person responsible for providing information and for co-ordinating information from smaller sub-units.

453.It is very important to secure the co-operation of the person in charge of responding. Respondents are asked to spend time on a task which is often of no direct benefit to them; they may even see completing a questionnaire on R&D as a waste of time and money. It is the responsibility of the surveying agency to help contributors to appreciate the potential uses of the data and to be alert to respondents’ potential needs in terms of R&D statistics. It is also its responsibility to respect confidential data and to ensure that users are aware of respondents’ concerns. In the design of surveys, it should consider the need to minimise the burden on respondents.

454.The respondent is rarely a user of the statistics, but it is important to show what has been done with the data in order to encourage co-operation. The respondent might receive the publication, or, if this is not feasible, a summary. Customised information which allows the respondent to compare his/her unit with corresponding national totals may also be useful.

455.The statistical agency should provide the respondent with technical assistance and name, phone number, fax number and e-mail addresses for all contact persons within the agency. The extent to which follow-up procedures are used will depend on the level and quality of responses, the number of units surveyed and the resources available to the surveying authority. It is rarely feasible to contact personally all the units surveyed. One possibility is to plan a follow-up programme for each enquiry, aiming to visit all the main units over a given period. Another is to limit the follow-up and to check a few entities very thoroughly. Personal contacts with respondents who require guidance or who submit unsatisfactory returns should be encouraged.

456.Almost all respondents will have to make some estimates. Not only is R&D a complex activity in itself, it is inextricably linked to a number of other activities. Furthermore, an institution’s R&D may not be satisfactorily reflected either in its organisation or in its records and accounts.

457.R&D is not only what R&D laboratories and research institutes do. It is both less and more than this, since very few of the surveyed entities have only one activity. The measurement of R&D inputs may be carried out in three stages:

–Identification of all specialised R&D units and measurement of their total activity.

–Estimates of the non-R&D portions of their activity and subtraction of these estimates from the total.

–Estimates of the inputs used for R&D in other units and addition of these estimates to the total.

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458. In practice, minor deviations from the strict R&D definition may be overlooked in order to better utilise existing records or to otherwise ease the burden on respondents. In some cases, particularly in the higher education sector, it may be necessary to resort to very crude ratios to estimate R&D inputs.

7.4.2. Operational criteria

459.Operational criteria that are suitable for the sector surveyed must be developed. Thus, on questionnaires intended for the business enterprise sector, it would be appropriate to give guidance for distinguishing between R&D and pre-production, whereas a government questionnaire might concentrate on the difference between R&D, on the one hand, and data collection and information, on the other. Sector-specific examples might be useful to guide respondents. Reference might be made to detailed examples in this Manual. Responding units may need criteria for distinguishing between contracts to industry for goods and services required for intramural R&D and those awarded for the performance of industrial R&D. Criteria with the same intent but different wording may be useful in business enterprise surveys. Nor should differences within a sector be overlooked. For example, operational definitions and examples appropriate for the oil and gas industry are probably not well suited to the electrical products industry. In discussions with respondents, supplementary criteria are often useful. Examples are given in Chapter 2, Table 2.1.

460.During R&D surveys, respondents may find it very difficult to apply the theoretical distinctions made in earlier chapters of this Manual to the wide range of projects under way in their organisation. As surveying agencies are not always able to check responses and are usually obliged to accept them as given, it is of utmost importance that they provide the institutions surveyed with clear explanations and guidance to complement the formal definitions in order to ensure uniformity.

461.Four important tools for achieving this objective are:

–Explanatory notes.

–Hypothetical examples.

–Guidance to individual respondents.

–Documentation on treatment of different cases.

462. For obvious reasons, this Manual deals exclusively with the first two tools. Formal definitions and theoretical distinctions have to be complemented by the last two. To ensure that the guidance given by surveying agencies is consistent, it is essential to develop documentation on how difficult borderline cases have been solved. Such documentation can also

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