Fact‑Based Understanding of Business Survey Non‑Response

Abstract

A 2007‑2008 two‑nation business survey was carried out by two universities and supporting business development agencies. The intention of describing small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) and their use of information technology and cooperation was disrupted by a very low response rate. Some practices concerning nonresponse (Rogelberg & Stanton, 2007) are discussed and implemented. The collected data are compared to data known in advance from registers for the nonresponding companies. Also, a second data set with concise answer information from nonrespondents was obtained by phone for categorization of the nonrespondents. Finally the nonresponse is related to data about contact between the companies and business development agencies to illuminate interest as the dependent variable. The article is an investigation into nonresponse at the organizational level and demonstrates throughout the article how facts obtained by other methods (multi mode) besides the central survey can improve the understanding of nonresponse.