Economic Downturn

The data for this survey report were collected for the NFIB Research Foundation by the executive interviewing group of The Gallup Organization. The interviews for this edition of the Poll were conducted between March 5 – April 3, 2008 from a sample of small employers. “Small employer” was defined for purposes of this survey as a business owner employing no less than one individual in addition to the owner(s) and no more than 249.

The sampling frame used for the survey was drawn at the Foundation’s direction from the files of the Dun & Bradstreet Corporation, an imperfect file but the best currently available for public use.  Two samples were drawn from the file. The first was a random stratified sample of small manufacturers designed to compensate for their highly skewed distribution by employee size of firm (Table A1).  Almost 60 percent of small manufacturers in the United States employ just one to nine people meaning that a random sample would yield comparatively few larger small employers to interview. Since size within the small manufacturer population is often an important differentiating variable, it is important that an adequate number of interviews be conducted among those employing more than 10 people. The interview quotas established to achieve these added interviews from larger, small manufacturers are arbitrary but adequate to allow independent examination of the 10-19 and 20-249 employee size classes as well as the 1-9 employee size group.

Table A1
Sample Composition under Varying Scenarios

*Sample universe developed from the Bureau of the Census 2002 data) published by the Office of Advocacy at the Small Business Administration