Call for Proposals - Kauffman Firm Survey Research Projects

Deadline: March 18, 2009

CALL FOR PROPOSALS
Research Funding Program for Kauffman Firm Survey Projects

Deadline: March 18, 2009, by 5:00 p.m. Central Standard Time

The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation is pleased to announce a Research Funding Program for social science scholars interested in entrepreneurship, innovation, and related research using the newly-available Kauffman Firm Survey (KFS) data set—a unique new source of firm-level data available through the NORC Data Enclave. For the 2009 program, research funding will be awarded in amounts up to $20,000 for individual scholars or groups of scholars. There are two funding categories:

1. Database Improvements: for scholars willing to improve the quality of KFS data by merging outside datasets and providing documentation for other researchers.
2. Methodological Advances: for scholars interested in advancing the state-of-the-art in terms of methodology. Examples will be made available to the user community and might include:

• Developing code that creates different measures of innovation or entrepreneurship.
• Creating measures of business demographics.
• Developing a set of FAQs about different aspects of the data or a detailed literature review.
• Developing new, or restructuring current, questions for the survey and providing documentation of the rationale for those questions.
• Creating analytical extracts or subsets of the base file.
• Developing new approaches to engage and promote an active user community within the Data Enclave.

Researchers will be required to:

1. participate in a virtual training program about the NORC data enclave,
   
2. actively contribute to the NORC KFS research community,
   
3. share preliminary findings that may be of interest to the program, and
   
4. present a final paper upon request to showcase their findings. Papers will be published in the KFS working paper series with the Social Science Research Network, which does not preclude publication in journals.

The deadline to apply for research funding to use KFS data through the NORC Data Enclave is March 18, 2009, by 5:00 p.m. Central Standard Time. Research proposals should consist of the following:

1. Identification of the category into which the proposal falls.
2. A description of the proposed work (up to ten pages).
3. The CV of the researcher(s).
4. A line-item budget and narrative justification.

Funding is open only to scholars associated with an accredited U.S. institution of higher education or non-profit organizations or students pursuing doctoral degrees. All grant funds are required to be used for direct project/program expenses. No portion may be used for indirect expenses. Up to five researchers may be awarded free access to the enclave data without additional funding.

Authors should use Arial typeface with a twelve-point font and one-inch margins. Proposals should be e-mailed to Alicia Robb, arobb@ucsc.edu, as PDF or Microsoft Word documents.

Additional information about the Data Enclave is available at dataenclave.norc.org/. You also may contact Program Director Tim Mulcahy at (301) 634-9352 to discuss the Enclave in more detail. 

Researchers may apply for a Kauffman-sponsored seat through the Kauffman Foundation or apply directly to NORC for access at $100/week, six month minimum.  To apply for a Kauffman-sponsored seat (with no research funding), please send a 3-5 page project proposal that outlines your research project and the need for the confidential data (as opposed to the public use version available for download on our website), as well as your CV to arobb@ucsc.edu.  Proposals are reviewed monthly.

A public-use data file for the KFS baseline and with two years of follow-up is available for download currently.  The third follow-up will be available in April 2009.