Framework for the Review of Research Programs of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health - Agriculture Forestry and Fishing Research at NIOSH - page 255

Having completed Table 4, the EC should undertake its final assessment of
the impact and relevance of the program. Final program ratings will consist of
the numerical scores and prose descriptions of why the scores were given. As ex-
plained below, the ECs will summarize their responses to charges 1 and 2 by rating
the relevance and impact of the NIOSH research program on five-point scales in
which 1 is the lowest and 5 the highest rating. The FC has made an effort to es-
tablish mutually exclusive rating categories in the five-point rating scale; when the
basis of a rating fits more than one category, the highest applicable score should
be assigned. ECs will need to consider the impact and relevance of both NIOSH
completed research and research in progress. In general, the assessment of impact
will consider research completed, and the assessment of relevance will include
research in progress related to likely future improvements. When assessing the
relevance of the program, the EC should keep in mind how well the program has
considered the frequency and severity of the problems being addressed, whether
appropriate attention has been directed to both genders, vulnerable populations
or hard-to-reach workplaces, and whether the different needs of large and small
businesses have been accounted for.
The FC has some concern that the impact scoring system proposed below
might be considered a promotion of the conventional occupational-health re-
search paradigm that focuses on health-effect and technology research and not
give much emphasis to socioeconomic and policy research and to surveillance and
diffusion research (as opposed to activities) needed to effect change. Clearly, not
all intermediate outcomes occur in the workplace. There are important outcomes
much farther out on the causal chain that NIOSH can affect, and not all these can
be defined as well-accepted intermediate outcomes. NIOSH, for example, has an
important role to play in generating knowledge that may contribute to changing
norms in the insurance industry, in health-care practice, in public-health practice,
and in the community at large. The ECs may find that some of these issues need
to be addressed and considered as important to influence the external factors that
limit application of more traditional research findings. Given the rapidly changing
nature of work and the workforce and some of the intractable problems in manu-
facturing, mining, and some other fields, the ECs are encouraged to think beyond
the traditional paradigm.

Rating of Impact

5 = Research program has made a major contribution to worker health

and safety on the basis of end outcomes or well-accepted intermediate
outcomes.