Payment Arrangements
The data for
this survey report were collected for the NFIB Research Foundation by Mason-Dixon
Polling and Research. The interviews for this edition of the Poll were
conducted between November 3 - 23, 2015 from a sample of
small employers. “Small employer” was defined for purposes of this
survey as a business owner employing no fewer 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. A random stratified sample design was
employed to compensate for the highly skewed distribution of small business
owners by employee size of firm (Table A1). Almost 60 percent of employers in
the United States employ just one to four people meaning that a random sample
would yield comparatively few larger small employers to interview. Since size
within the small business 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-business owners were
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.