  Public managers lack feedback on the effectiveness of public investments,
policies, and programs instituted to build and use research capacity. Numerous
reports rank countries on global performance on innovation and competitiveness,
but the highly globalized data does not distinguish country contributions from
global ones. We suggest improving upon global reports by removing globalized
measures and combining a reliable set of national indicators into an index. We
factor analyze 14 variables for 172 countries from 2013 to 2021. Two factors
emerge, one for raw or core research capacity and the other indicating the
wider context of governance. Analysis shows convergent validity within the two
factors and divergent validity between them. Nations rank differently between
capacity, governance context, and the product of the two. Ranks also vary as a
function of the chosen aggregation method. Finally, as a test of the predictive
validity of the capacity index, a regression analysis was implemented
predicting national citation strength. Policymakers and analysts may find
stronger feedback from this approach to quantifying national research strength.
