Nationwide Survey Releases Second Year of Data and Resources on Entrepreneurship to Policymakers and Researchers
CHICAGO, December 4, 2023 – NORC at the University of Chicago has published the second wave of the Entrepreneurship in the Population (EPOP) Survey, a publicly available resource for understanding entrepreneurial activities across the United States. The EPOP Survey includes an array of measures of entrepreneurial behavior at local, state, and national levels. EPOP data provide policymakers with new information on past, present, and future business ownership and self-employment in their communities.
Guided and funded by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, the EPOP Survey is an annual, cross-sectional, nationally representative study of about 30,000 adults in the United States who represent existing business owners, former business owners, prospective entrepreneurs, freelancers, and gig workers. The survey seeks to understand the pathways people take toward business ownership and self-employment and factors that support and inhibit entrepreneurship. Three more surveys are planned from 2024 to 2026.
“The EPOP:2023 Survey results give policymakers and researchers data to comprehensively study all entrepreneurial activities with enhancements to better understand the background of successful entrepreneurs.”
“Although a wide range of data on business owners are currently available, information on broader entrepreneurial activities is limited,” said Quentin Brummet, EPOP Survey principal investigator and senior research methodologist at NORC. “The EPOP:2023 Survey results give policymakers and researchers data to comprehensively study all entrepreneurial activities with enhancements to better understand the background of successful entrepreneurs.”
The EPOP Survey website hosts an interactive data dashboard where users can compare national, state, and metropolitan area findings that show how levels of engagement in entrepreneurship vary across the country and year over year. Some initial findings from the EPOP:2023 Survey show:
Like EPOP:2022, results from the 2023 survey show high levels of engagement in entrepreneurial activities—63 percent of individuals are either currently or have been engaged in an entrepreneurial activity.
Over one-third of adults considered starting a business at some point but ultimately changed their mind. For most, this was not their only attempt to own a business, and they owned another business or engaged in freelance work in the past.
Roughly half of business owners reported owning a single business with no prior business ownership.
Learn more about the EPOP Survey, explore the interactive data dashboard, access the public use data file, or apply for a restricted use data file: EPOP.norc.org.
Methodology
The EPOP Survey target population is all non-institutionalized adults 18 years or older in the United States. The study sample is selected from three frame sources: (1) NORC’s AmeriSpeak® Panel; (2) an addressed-based sample (ABS) frame built from the U.S. Postal Service Delivery Sequence File (DSF); and a sample from opt-in panels. Samples selected from the AmeriSpeak Panel and the ABS frame are probability samples with explicit stratification and known sample selection probabilities, while the sample selected from the opt-in panels is a nonprobability sample with unknown frame coverage and unknown selection probabilities.
EPOP:2023 data collection started on March 18, 2023, with the release of the AmeriSpeak sample. NORC mailed ABS advanced letters on March 29, 2023. Data collection for both ABS and AmeriSpeak samples officially ended on July 4, 2023. Data were also collected from a non-probability sample between June 14, 2023, and July 5, 2023. Data were primarily collected via an online survey; computer-assisted telephone interviewing was a secondary mode and available upon request. The survey was available in both English and Spanish. All participants were compensated for their participation.
Complete surveys from the three sample sources were combined using NORC’s TrueNorth® weighting method to generate a set of combined sample weights for estimation.
About NORC at the University of Chicago
NORC at the University of Chicago conducts research and analysis that decision-makers trust. As a nonpartisan research organization and a pioneer in measuring and understanding the world, we have studied almost every aspect of the human experience and every major news event for more than eight decades. Today, we partner with government, corporate, and nonprofit clients around the world to provide the objectivity and expertise necessary to inform the critical decisions facing society.
Contact: For more information, please contact Eric Young at NORC at young-eric@norc.org or (703) 217-6814 (cell).
About the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation
The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation is a private, nonpartisan foundation based in Kansas City, Mo., which seeks to build inclusive prosperity through a prepared workforce and entrepreneur-focused economic development. The Foundation uses its $3 billion in assets to change conditions, address root causes, and break down systemic barriers so that all people—regardless of race, gender, or geography—have the opportunity to achieve economic stability, mobility, and prosperity. For more information, visit Kauffman.org and connect with us at twitter.com/kauffmanfdn and facebook.com/kauffmanfdn.