The Kauffman Firm Survey data collection continues to progress well.  Currently in its fifth collection period, we have received initial tabulations from Mathematica, the survey research firm executing the collection, that show continued responsiveness from our panel but also that the new or modified questions we added in the fourth survey (covering 2008 activities) are working well and getting interesting information.  It was an oversight on my part that I never posted the questions changes we made previously.  We expect to close data collection by the end of the year and to post the data for researchers a couple of months into 2010.

With that said, even though we are still finishing collection on the 2008 data, we are kicking off plans for the survey covering 2009 activities.  We have posted a call for suggestions on the questionnaire.  We have done this for three years and have gotten some interesting responses, some of which have been added.  While we would love nothing more to collect all the questions which researchers want to collect, we have a really high standard for accepting changes to the questionnaire.  We judge the questions based on relevancy to the rest of the data in the survey, the validity of collecting data on the time period we are currently surveying on (2009) vs. earlier activities, expected incidence within the KFS population, and other factors such as if the questions have ever been tested on other surveys or would help to demonstrate concepts which could be picked up by other ongoing surveys if successful. 

In addition, we are seeking a part-time research assistant on the KFS.