Appendix B
Maryland Business Climate Survey Methodology
The Maryland Business Climate Survey offers an unparalleled resource for analyzing both the direction and perception of the state’s economy. The Jacob France Institute of the University of Baltimore began the survey in the second quarter of 1995, inspired by work it was doing for the Maryland Chamber of Commerce and some of the state’s leading corporations in developing a business-oriented strategic plan for Maryland.
For more than a decade, the survey took the pulse of the business community and contributed to a better understanding of the issues facing businesses in all parts of the state. The survey was ended in 2006 but re-started in the second quarter of 2010 through 2011 with the support of the Merrick School of Business of the University of Baltimore. In 2017, the Maryland Public Policy Institute teamed with the Jacob France Institute with the Baltimore Business Journal as media partner to restart the survey.
Each quarter, the Schafer Center at the University of Baltimore conducted telephone interviews with senior executives in 250 or more businesses with 10 or more employees from across Maryland. This survey has a total of 1,010 completed interviews over the four quarters of the 2019 survey period—a standard sample size for many types of surveys seeking a margin of error of three percent for the overall state-level results.