Questions & Answers

Question: How does NCBER achieve such a high response rate from businesses?

Answer: 1. NCBER Census data collection methods and procedures have been developed over more than 150 large-scale projects involving almost two million businesses. Everything we have learned over the years to increase response rates has been put to use, such as question phraseology and positioning, scripted introductions and fall-back statements and intensive training of our researchers.
2. NCBER Census projects are always executed on behalf of a well-known, local business advocacy group with high visibility and credibility.
3. NCBER delivers significant benefits back to the respondents in terms of customized on-line business tools that provide results and comparison data from the Census as well as a host of other ultra-current, local staffing information - all free of charge.

Question: Why do you only allow three co-sponsors (investors) per vertical market.

Answer: 1. Co-sponsors may be calling on businesses that participated in the Census. If we did not limit the number of co-sponsors to a few, high-quality stakeholders, participants could be inundated with sales calls, which in turn would reduce the future response rates.
2. Each Census investor is heavily promoted to the local business community as a co-sponsor. Co-sponsors are listed in the alert faxes we send to business prior to calling, in the phone interview, the information web sites, the press releases, etc. This eliminates the surprise a participant may otherwise get if a co-sponsor calls them. If there were too many co-sponsors, this would become impractical.
3. By limiting participation to only three major sponsors per vertical market, the value is higher to the co-sponsor.

Question: How can you be confident that the answers provided by a respondent are honest and reliable?

Answer: This question is one of the most important aspects of a well-designed and well-executed survey. Although far from a complete list, the following are some of the issues that must be addressed properly:

• Is the researcher talking to the right individual?
• Is the question asked unambiguous and easily understood?
• Does the researcher have clear and accurate fall-back statements in case the respondent is unsure?
• Are the fixed answer lists representative, of optimal length and randomly ordered?
• Are the researchers properly trained and monitored to ensure that questions are asked in in a consistent and unbiased manner?
• Are proper checks built into the collection system to check, catch and correct answers that in context are questionable?
• Are there adequate back-end quality assurance systems to perform random spot checks and call backs to verify and validate the information?

As one of the most experienced business survey companies in the world, ERISS has consistently collected some of the most sensitive business intelligence around (detailed hiring, staffing and salary intelligence) - information that has repeatedly been validated by outside sources as accurate and reliable. It is this experience that NCBER, through ERISS brings to bear in the business census projects.

Question: How can an NCBER census produce actionable data in as little as 48 hours when a typical cluster survey takes from six months to a year to produce any output?

Answer: The primary reason is the difference in methodology. A typical cluster survey will sample less than less than 3% of local businesses whereas a NCBER census will "sample" 100%. So whereas a typical cluster survey will spend a considerable amount of time designing the stratification layers and related samples, an NCBER survey can begin very quickly (within two to three weeks).

The other great difference is that by design, the goal of a random sample survey is to provide representative data by contacting as few respondents as possible, whereas an NCBER census's aim is to provide representative data by contacting as many respondents as possible. As a result, an NCBER census produces a very large and immediate stream of responses that very quickly can be analysed on a top level (typically within 3-4 weeks) and is associated with large numbers of individual responses that can be used tactically (such as relocation early warnings).

Question: What about privacy? Do companies know they may get a call from the co-sponsors?

Answer: Apart from the fact that privacy laws are almost exclusively concerned with individuals and not firms, respondents are informed that the sponsors and co-sponsors may use the information generated by the census and they have the opportunity to suppress all information given. If the information is suppressed, it will only be used in aggregates where the responding firm cannot be identified.

Question: Will a participating bank, for example, be able to see what other bank a specific business banks with?

Answer: No. A participating bank will only be able to identify whether the business is their customer or another bank's customer, but not which other bank.

Question: What and how many vertical markets can participate in the Census?

Answer: There is a very real limit to how many questions can be asked before the quality and quantity of data collected declines rapidly. Consequently there is typically only room for three vertical markets. For example, if telecommunications wants to participate, this may eliminate insurance and vice versa. This is why NCBER carefully analyzes the local market with our local chamber or economic development partner before we determine what verticals should participate.

Question: If there are more than three stakeholders who want to invest in a local census project, how do you determine who gets it?

Answer: Co-sponsorships are awarded exclusively on a "first-come, first-serve" basis. In addition, we work closely with our local chamber or economic development partner(s) to ensure that the opportunity is made available to everyone at approximately the same time.

Question: Is it possible for a co-sponsor to buy complete exclusivity to the data?

Answer: No. One of the major purposes of the Census is to foster increased local competition and more efficient markets. Providing the data to only one co-sponsor would be counter-productive to this purpose.

Question: Can a co-sponsor participate on a larger, regional or national basis?

Answer: Yes. Any co-sponsor who has invested in a local census project is automatically offered other census projects before others.

Question: What safeguards do you have that the census information that is being promised on a semi-exclusive basis to investing co-sponsors is not made available to others?

Answer: All data generated is owned by NCBER and kept under strict safeguards. Our chamber and economic development partners are only provided data on a license basis and must sign off on a confidentiality agreement before being provided access.