The questionnaire is divided into several sections.
The first section is known as the "closed part" because it is composed of at least 9 blocks of items, scored on the Likert scale of nine points (1 = completely false, 9 = completely true), plus the options: Do Not Know and Not Applicable. For example, the first blocks, concerning Finance for Entrepreneurs, Government policies and Governmental programs are as follows:
An expert values each item by choosing a code from 1 to 9 or 97 or 98 for the responses "Does Not Know" or "Not Applicable". GEM reserves the code 99 for the missing cases if applicable.
This part of the questionnaire includes 56 items whose values provide the average state for all the following topics considered to directly influence the Entrepreneurial Framework Conditions:
- Financing for entrepreneurs
- Governmental policies for entrepreneurs
- Governmental programs for entrepreneurs
- Entrepreneurship education and training
- R&D transfer
- Commercial and professional infrastructure for entrepreneurs
- Internal market openness
- Physical and services infrastructure
- Cultural and social norms
The second section of the NES questionnaire consists of three blocks of questions in which experts provides open-ended responses. The first block asks for three factors that inhibit or constrain entrepreneurial activity. The second block asks for three factors which enhance or encourage entrepreneurial activity and, the third asks for three recommendations to improve the entrepreneurial framework of the target country or region. These responses are used to write a qualitative diagnostic. For the Global Report, all of them are coded in one of 20 areas.
Refined List of Topics to Classify the Opened Questions of the NES
- Financial support for entrepreneurship: all responses related to any type of financing, including public subsides or helps, informal investment, banks, credit, microcredits, venture capital…
- Government policies: all responses related to public policies of support or constraint to entrepreneurship, taxes, bureaucracy, regulations, business registration, agencies, public personnel that attends entrepreneurs…. See Topic 19 for if it gives a better approach
- Government programs: all responses related to public programs, specific initiatives for entrepreneurs, for women, for youth, immigrant, other groups, public incubators, countryside programs, helps or subsides for concrete types of projects, concrete territorial actions….
- Education and training: all responses in which education or training is involved in any way or level
- R&D transfer: all responses related to transmission of knowledge from university or scientific parks or similar to the enterprise or the contrary, collaborations between firms and university/scientific parks, initiatives in this field, public or private programs related to this topic, incubators…
- Commercial and professional infrastructure: all responses that mention the role or costs or accessibility to these type of professional services for entrepreneurs that involve accouters, consultants, lawyers, administrators, new technologies to manage business provision….
- Market openness: all responses related to market features, state of the demand, the supply, the exports, the imports, the competence, monopolies, barriers or supports to entry in the market, existence of opportunities or lack of them, return rates…
- Physical and services infrastructure: all responses related to access, cost, availability of physical infrastructures such as roads, water, gas, electricity, phone, new technologies of communication, real state, spaces to implement business or offices, logistics and similar….
- Cultural and social norms: all responses related to the vision, degree of support or other types of perceptions of the population toward the entrepreneur and business involved people, women entrepreneurship, youth…..
- Capacity for entrepreneurship: all responses related with comments about the spread of the entrepreneurial spirit in the population, of the type of result perceived in the population about the cultural background, the general degree of involvement of the population in entrepreneurship or its capacity to become entrepreneurs, the population ‘s possession of entrepreneurial abilities….
- Economic climate: all responses related to the national environment in economics, recessions, crisis, state of the economy, how the economy influences entrepreneurship, economic features, economic changes, national relative position in economics… See Topic 15 for if it gives a better approach
- Work force features: all responses related to the situation of the labor market, unemployment as a factor pushing entrepreneurship by necessity, full employment as an entrepreneurial constrainer, demand and supply of jobs…. See Topic 19 for if it gives a better approach
- Perceived population composition: all responses related to immigration, presence of foreigners in the labor market, in the entrepreneurial context, conflicts or other issues derived from the population’s composition, return of immigrants…
- Political, institutional and social context: all responses related to the political or social environment in a nation, political actuation, social reactions, international politics, political conflicts, social or political actions, social climate… See Topic 16 for if it gives a better approach
- The ongoing crisis: Although it could be included in topic 11, it appears each time more cited in several countries. All responses that explicitly mention the ongoing crisis having any type of influence in the national entrepreneurial process
- Corruption: although this could be included in topic 14, it appears each time more specifically cited
- Different performing of small, medium and large companies: all responses that stand that there are differences among the firms or business because of their dimension in any sense: start up, taxes, regulation, operations, competence…
- Internationalization: all responses related to the international process of entrepreneurship, relations with partners, customers, institutions outside, different regulations, trade laws….
- Labor costs, access and regulation: although this could be included in topic 2 or 12, there are each time more specific responses related these issues. All responses related to costs and formalities to contract employees, human resources management, access to qualified people, and the like…
- Information: all responses related to the availability, access, provision of information critical for potential and present entrepreneurs
The third section of the questionnaire includes variables that describe the professional and personal background of the experts, and the codes are:
- Gender: 1 = male 0 = female
- Year or birth = 4 digits' year
- Educational attainment: 1 = yes 0 = no, to any of the possibilities (vocational or technical training; professional training; university or college degree and graduate scholarly work)
- Nature of professional training emphasis: opened response
- Profile: entrepreneur = 1, investor or financier = 2, policy maker = 3, business and support services provider = 4, educator, teacher, researcher = 5, other = opened
- Name, address, phone and e-mail