The Study of Critical Realism Implications in Evaluation of Science, Technology and Innovation Policy Making

Objective: The purpose of this study is to identify and extract the implications of critical realism for science, technology and innovation policy-making as one of the later research traditions in social sciences. Nevertheless, its main focus, according to the different stages of the policy-making cycle and extent of its contributing factors, is on the stage of "policy evaluation". Methods: This research has been conducted based on the methodology of implication-research studies. In implication-research studies which are common in social sciences, researchers try to find implications from a social philosophy, framework, theory and or a model for their professional or specialized discipline. Accordingly, the authors first identified and extracted the elements of critical realism (emphasizing Roy Bhaskar's critical realism) and verified them consulting experts of the social sciences and philosophy of the method. Then, the implications of these elements have been extracted for the stage of evaluation of the science, technology and innovation policy and have been verified and confirmed by interdisciplinaryexperts. Results: The implications found in the current research showed that critical realism can be useful both in previous evaluations in which counterfactual investigations cannot be done based on deductive and inductive methods and in the future evaluations where the analysis of the relationship between the goal and the tool requires transformation with an emphasize on institutions such as meaning system. In addition, critical realism is also effective in completing the prescriptive part of the later approaches of science, technology, and innovation policy-making (such as innovation system), which are often conceptual and descriptive frameworks. Conclusion: Critical realism approach, at the same time, can help both the "explanatory" and the "prescriptive" aspects of the innovation system. The latter is more important because, according to some theorists of innovation system, this framework has serious gaps in this regard.