Online Program

CHARACTERISTICS OF RESPONDENTS TO A LONGITUDINAL SURVEY OF NEW FIRMS

Keywords: Nonresponse, small firms, new firms, longitudinal

The Kauffman Firm Survey (KFS), sponsored by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, seeks to collect data from new businesses once they have been established, in order to better understand business creation, maturation, and the characteristics of the founders of new businesses. The Foundation, contracted Mathematica Policy Research, Inc. to conduct the KFS. Mathematica selected and interviewed principals at nearly 5,000 firms that started operations in 2004 with baseline data collected in 2005 and annual follow-up interviews with these firms since then (2006 through 2010). KFS data base contains baseline information on the ownership, firm size, type of industry and location as well as the response status for these firms for each of the 5 follow-up years. We will present profiles of firms that chose to continue participation in the KFS and we will discuss characteristics of firms associated with continued participation.