2024 Newsletter 2
North Central Region Database Continues to Grow with Addition of Thematic Survey on Small Businesses
by North Central Regional Center for Rural Development
New survey focuses on the intersection of small businesses, benefits, and rural health
North Central Regional Center for Rural Development (NCRCRD) continues to grow its unique open access, regional database with the recent release of the data from the thematic survey, the NCR-Stat: Small Business.
Because rural businesses are essential to their communities, often employing rural residents and impacting the local economy, NCRCRD conducted the NCR-Stat: Small Business Survey to explore small businesses in the context of rural health. This new, open access dataset includes 1,287 responses from small business owners in the North Central Region on a variety of topics including small business ownership type, small business benefits, substance misuse and mental health, workforce development, trust and community, adjustment strategies, socioemotional wealth, financials, and business owners’ households.
Renee Wiatt, NCRCRD Research and Extension Specialist and Family Business Management Specialist at Purdue University who led the survey’s development and implementation shared, “By specifically exploring the intersection of small businesses and rural health, we hope that researchers can better understand the decisions that small business owners make as employers, what benefits they are able to provide to their employees, rural health impacts, and other aspects of small business ownership in rural America. ”
All data gathered via the NCR-Stat: Small Business Survey is open access and available for those who want to use the data as a baseline for further research and to extend the portfolio of already existing databases. The information gathered from this survey is intended to be shared with communities, organizations, and decision-makers to help inform future policies and programs and better support small businesses and workforce development in the North Central Region.
The Small Business survey is part of a larger effort by NCRCRD to build an NCR-Stat database to facilitate interdisciplinary collaboration among researchers and Extension, and between high- and low-resourced institutions across the region. “We are very excited about the growth of the NCR-Stat. The publication of the thematic surveys, like the NCR-Stat: Small Business begins to realize the potential of the database not only to understand the region better but to witness new collaborations develop using the data,” said Maria Marshall, Director, NCRCRD.
Learn more about each NCR-Stat survey and download the data:
NCR-Stat: Baseline 2022: Respondents: 4,232 NCR household responses
NCR-Stat: Caregiving: Respondents: 4,532 NCR household responses of which 1,596 are child caregivers and 1,325 are adult caregivers.
NCR-Stat: Small Business: Respondents: 1,287 NCR small business owners
Additional Regional Datasets:
NCRCRD has two additional North Central Region surveys in development and is also working with our sister centers – the Northeast Regional Center for Rural Development (NERCRD) and Southern Rural Development (SRDC) – to conduct some of the same NCR-Stat surveys in their region. Regional surveys in development or recently released include:
North Central Region: NCR-Stat: Baseline 2024 and NCR-Stat: Housing
Northeast Region: NER-Stat: Caregiving (available now) and NER-Stat: Baseline 2024
Southern Region: SR-Stat: Baseline 2024
Published: December 2024