Non-farm businesses local economic integration level: the case of six Portuguese small and medium-sized Markettowns• - a sector approach

Table 2. Usable questionnaires done - NON-FARM BUSINESS

Source: Done by the author

The choice of criteria to define the sampling frame took into account the possibility of an
immediate identification and classification of the units to survey. This helped make the survey
process a lot easier, and avoid unnecessary deviations from the previously defined samples. It
also helped guarantee its representativeness. Some discrepancies observed between some of
the sample frames and the number of questionnaires actually done were caused by some
difficulties in approaching the firms and their unwillingness or lack of time to answer the
questionnaires. The random survey process constant monitoring was also rendered more
difficult due to there being several members of the team on the field at the same time. The
following tables summarize the usable questionnaires.

FINDINGS

First of all as regards respondents’ answers, in every town of our study area non-farm
businesses may be described as follows, according to the value of their most frequent features:
- The firm businesses belong to the service sector;

- Independent firms with no sites;

- They have always been located there, half of them for over ten years;

- Business firms with more than ten WTE have the bigger employment;

- The data were supplied by the owner.

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