Methodology and sample
| The PwC Private Business Barometer is prepared once every six months based on detailed questioning of a large sample of Australian-owned private businesses with revenues between approximately A$10 million to A$100 million per year. To compile this edition of the PwC Private Business Barometer, Roy Morgan Research completed telephone and online interviews with 851 businesses during February and March 2011. The market researchers interviewed the owner, chief executive officer or senior director of each business surveyed. Fieldwork for the May 2011 PwC Private Business Barometer began immediately after natural disasters had devastated Queensland and other parts of Australia. After consultation with clients and colleagues, PwC elected not to survey Queensland businesses in the formal fieldwork commissioned for this edition of the PwC Private Business Barometer, allowing businesses to focus on recovering and rebuilding. The PwC Private Business Barometer questionnaire includes set questions that do not change from one survey to the next, and topical questions designed to obtain the private business community’s views on issues of the moment. Tables in this report may not total 100 per cent due to rounding. More than half (52 per cent) of respondents in this survey were business owners; 73 per cent were one of several owners of their business. As the table below shows, the sample includes strong coverage of the major industries. Twenty-one per cent of respondents were in the manufacturing industry, 15 per cent in distribution and wholesale trade, 14 per cent in retail and 12 per cent in property and construction. |  |
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