Research evaluation is a political priority in Italy, there is nothing to say on its merit. The intent of this work is to focus on its method, by analysing from a methodological point of view, some aspects of the research products’ evaluation procedure used during the VQR. The main focus will be the evaluation procedure utilised in the Area of Political and Social Science. In the reporting of VQR, despite several efforts in the direction of the accountability, some decisive procedural steps remained in the shade, including the operational definition of the research quality for the gathering of the peer’s judgments through the evaluation forms. Therefore, the ways in which the concept of research quality has been translated into variables will be analysed. Furthermore, the analysis will concern procedure used to summarize this information up to the allocation of the final level of merit.