
## 3 Application Of Narrative Analysis To Science And Engineering Policy

Our way of analyzing semantics is sketched out as follows:
- We discern story semantics arising out of the orientation of narrative. - This is based on the web of interrelationships. - We examine caesuras and breakpoints in the flow of narrative.

Let us look at the implications of this for data mining with decision policy support in view.

Consider a fairly typical funded project, and its phases up to and beyond the funding decision. Different research funding agencies differ in their procedures.

But a narrative can always be strung together. All stages of the proposal and successful project life cycle, including external evaluation and internal decision making, are highly document - and as a consequence narrative - based. It is precisely the analysis of such a narrative that is our longer term goal.

As a first step towards much fuller analysis of these many and varied narratives involved in funded projects, let us look at the very general role of narrative in national research development. We will look at:
- Overall view - overall synthesis of information
- Orientation of strands of development
- Their tempo, rhythm Through such an analysis of narrative, among the issues to be addressed are:
- Strategy and its implementation in terms of themes and subthemes represented

- Thematic focus and coverage
- Organisational clustering

- Evaluation of outputs in a global context
- All the above over time Our aim is to understand the "big picture". It is not to replace the varied measures of success that are applied, such as publications, patents, licences, numbers of PhDs completed, company start-ups, and so on. It is instead to appreciate the broader configuration and orientation, and to determine the most salient aspects underlying the data.