Preface
The book you are about to read has a history of about ten years. For the last decade we have been thinking about preparing a comprehensive book on business surveys. In the literature on social survey methodology, many books about designing and conducting surveys are available [e.g., Groves et al. (2004); Czaja and Blair, 2005; de Leeuw et al. (2008); Dillman et al. (2009)]. This also holds for business research methods focusing on business market and management research. There is, however, no textbook devoted specifically to business surveys, that is, surveys that collect data from businesses for statistical, research, or policy reasons, although some books contain a chapter devoted to business surveys [e.g., Dillman et al. (2009)]. The one exception is the monograph entitled Business Survey Methods edited by Cox et al. (1995). This book was published following the first International Conference on Establishment Surveys (ICES) held in 1993. Although highly regarded as a valuable and scholarly overview of business survey issues, it is a compendium of different aspects of business surveys, rather than focusing on designing and conducting business surveys. Since publication of the Cox book, the business survey literature has continued to remain primarily dispersed in journals and conference papers.
Our mutual interest in developing a book devoted to business survey methodology became apparent when we all attended the Workshop on Questionnaire Pretesting Methods (QUEST) at ...
