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When it comes to brokerage firm research, what you get and what you want are often two different things. That's because the people who actually pay for analysts' reports have separate goals from yours.

More than three years of a bear market has done nothing to dent the individual investor's appetite for stock selection. Revelations of the conflicts of interest with analysts and investment bankers hasn't soured individual investors on stock selection. And maybe that's a good thing -- people have to believe in the system if it's going to work.

So individual investors - most of whom don't pay directly for brokerage research - want stock picks from brokerage analysts: what to buy, and what price target to aim for. These days, individuals particularly want recommendations of stocks that pay a dividend. Payout and dividend history are now quite in vogue, although the skeptic in me says chasing dividend paying stocks may be barking up the wrong tree, because dividend tax relief legislation may have a hard time actually becoming law. And even if it does pass muster in Congress, corporations still must pay taxes on dividends, which is why few companies have jumped on the dividend bandwagon.

During his recent crusade against Wall Street, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer took the time to blast Institutional Investor's star analysts for their lousy record at picking stocks. More than 40 percent of analysts ranked by the magazine were below average stock pickers, according to data compiled for Spitzer by research firm Investars.

But maybe the real problem isn't the analysts. Perhaps we need to rethink our expectations, and think like financial pros instead of retail investors.

When it comes to brokerage (or "sell-side") research, the viewpoint of institutional investors is the most important because they're the ones who actually foot the bill for those analysts and their reports. Your individual trading commissions don't generate enough to cover the cost of research -that expense is funded by fees from big clients such as pension plans, hedge funds and mutual funds.

And what do professional investors value most from sell-side analysts? Industry expertise tops the list, according to Institutional Investor's survey. Hedge funds and mutual funds want analysts from research firms and brokerages to provide reliable in-depth knowledge of an industries, sectors and individual companies viewed as potential investments. Research companies understand that desire, which is why more than a few analysts are hired largely for their industry experience. For instance, the top-ranked oil services analyst in 2002, James Wicklund from Banc of America Securities, is a former petroleum engineer.

Many fund managers read research reports not to find out about any particular company, but to get sector calls - overviews of an industry. Institutional Investor's First Team chip analyst, Dan Niles of Lehman Brothers, won kudos not for his work on any single stock, but because he was right in being "consistently negative" on the entire chip industry throughout 2001 and the first half of 2002.

After industry knowledge, institutional investors want trustworthiness, which was ranked as their second-most-important expectation for analysts. Obviously, you want to be able to trust your research sources.

Ranked third in the survey is accessibility and responsiveness of the brokerage team. Reports are worthless if you can't reach a live body to explain them when necessary, or interpret breaking events as they're happening. Millions can be lost when the phone goes unanswered, or calls are not returned.

Rounding out the top five most desired attributes of a brokerage research team are independence from corporate finance (good luck here with the SEC already considering watering down initiatives that grew out of the recent corporate scandals) and analysts' access to management. Jack Grubman notwithstanding, fund managers want their analysts to be as close to being company insiders as possible.

As for analysts' ability to pick stocks? Didn't even make the top 10 factors for institutional investors -- stock-picking was twelfth in importance, in the latest survey. That could be a function of this brutal bear market where it seemed like every stock pick was a loser, but in any kind of market, the main role of brokerage analysts is to provide context and information. Money manager clients do their own stock-picking; that's why they get paid in the first place.