SME Business Surveys

1. SME Business Surveys Andy Cosh Centre for Business Research Judge Business School University of Cambridge

2. The central questions • What are we seeking to achieve with an international survey of entrepreneurship? • If we simply want to benchmark across nations or through time, then ‘filling in existing surveys may be enough. • Any effort to study individual firms over time, or to explore policy impacts, is likely to need a more holistic view of the survey needs. • Any survey planning requires the answer to a set of, often inter-related, questions. • The following slides examine some of these questions.

3. Key issues • Definition of entrepreneurship • Sampling frame • Sample size • Legal entity • Size range • Independents, divisions, subsidiaries • Sectors • Survey timing • Survey organisations • Survey method and cost

4. Sampling frame • Assuming businesses are tracked • Two broad choices: • National business registers • Commercial databases e.g. Dun & Bradstreet • Choice depends on: • Cost • Firm or establishment • Coverage • Timeliness

5. Sample size • CBR surveys have achieved responses of over 2,000 firms, but would like more, particularly if the survey is to be longitudinal. • One problem is the cell size when one performs size, age, sector, legal form cuts of the data. • Another problem is firm death (by failure for the poor performers and by acquisition for the superior firms) • Need a strategy for supplementing the panel. • Need to decide whether to track entrepreneurs as they leave the businesses – might be achieved by questions to those remaining in the business (but what about failures?).

6. Legal forms etc. • Can take a firm or establishment basis • Self-employment/sole proprietorship/partnerships • Companies – restricted to private companies only • Independent firms only, or include subsidiaries • Consolidated responses including subsidiaries whether or not at same location • Exclude not-for-profit organisations

7. Size range • Surely need to include micro businesses • Probably need to include businesses with no employees • Upper size boundary, or constrain by age of firm, or by whether a private business • Need to recognise a growing trend towards novel forms of business creation

8. Sectors and stratification • Should all sectors be included – doctors, shopkeepers etc. can dominate the sample. • Depending on the purpose of the study will need to decide whether to over-sample in certain cells. • Similar questions arise concerning size ranges and legal forms.

9. Survey timing and organisation • Want to be approximately simultaneous across the participating countries. • Expect to carry out over a three month period and avoid key holidays in each country. • Best to demonstrate official endorsement of the survey whether or not the survey is actually carried out by a government agency. • Can be managed in-house, but there are many specialised survey organisations available. • Carry out non-response bias analysis. • Re-survey every 2-3 years to retain survey teams.

10. Survey method • CBR has used face-to-face interviews only for pilot surveys and so I have nothing to say about this method applied to major surveys. • CBR has used both telephone and postal surveys. • Telephone surveys have the advantage that they can be pursued until they reach particular cell quotas and are efficient in that sense. • Telephone surveys can include ‘real time’ checking of the consistency of the answers. • Postal surveys may be better for questions that require quantitative answers – more likely to look up and less likely to guess. • Response rates to telephone and postal surveys vary substantially across countries and do depend on their perceived status and relevance. • For the CBR surveys the response rate has been broadly similar for telephone and postal surveys.

11. Survey costs • Some examples for a survey that took 30 minutes as a telephone interview. • Cost per completed interview: • UK postal £20 - £25 • UK telephone £40 - £50 • US telephone £85 - £100 • These costs exclude the cost of any rewards given. • The CBR has never offered cash inducements but do offer privileged access to the findings for respondents. • The response rates are high when respondents to earlier surveys are re-surveyed.