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General Activities, Chapter 2 ; 

 Statistics on Science and Technology 



Assessment/Potential Impacts 



UNESCO's efforts in the area of science and technology statistics 

 are carried out in a central Office of Statistics under the Assistant 

 Director General for Program Support. The large staff, working with 

 statistical services of member countries, focuses on (1) collection, 

 dissemination, and publication of statistical data; (2) support of 

 international and regional conferences; (3) development of interna- 

 tional standards, concepts, and definitions to improve comparability of 

 data; and (4) training and improvement of statistical infrastructures. 

 The total program budget (projects and staff) plus overhead of this 

 activity is about $800,000 per year — the U.S. contribution is $200,000 

 per year. If one considers program costs only (about $500,000 per 

 year), the U.S. contribution is $125,000. 



The UNESCO Statistics on Science and Technology program has devel- 

 oped common concepts, definitions, and statistical methods for use by 

 all UNESCO member countries in surveying the expenditures and manpower 

 employed in R&D by the several sectors of their economies. The UNESCO 

 definitions differ in some respects from those of the OECD Frascati 

 Manual in order to make it possible for countries with free enterprise, 

 socialist, and development economies to reply to the periodic question- 

 naire. (In the United States, the NSF organizes the replies to both 

 the OECD and UNESCO inquiries.) Member countries forward their 

 completed surveys — usually carried out by their respective central 

 statistical bureaus--to UNESCO, which publishes the results in the 

 UNESCO Statistical Yearbook . This UNESCO effort is the only one that 

 provides more or less comparable data on the magnitude of employment 

 and investment in R&D in a large number of countries beyond the OECD 

 circle. The work has been carried on since its inception in the late 

 1960s by the Division of Statistics on Science and Technology of the 

 UNESCO Office of Statistics, largely independently of any UNESCO 

 activities in science policy formulation. 



Developing and interpreting standards for statistical surveys of 

 R&D investment is a highly technical activity, particularly when it 

 spans many countries. It depends on continuing contact with statis- 

 ticians in member countries and on periodic conferences to reinforce 

 conmon concepts, consider problems of reporting and interpretation of 

 data, and identify useful new directions, such as the proposed survey 

 of member country outlays for science and technology information and 

 documentation. 



The data emerging from the periodic surveys are available for 

 analysis those interested in the science and technology commitment of 

 other countries and for experts concerned with intercountry differences 

 in trends. U.S. nonmembership in UNESCO would limit the availability 

 of U.S. expertise for this area. 



