April 16, 2012 - Cabarrus County

Employers are relying on In-House Skills Training/Mentoring toaddress their skill needs and holding on to their currentworkforce as a secondary strategy.II. MethodologyThe North Carolina Business Services Representatives officiallydeployed the survey project on October 17, 2011. Surveys werecollected until December 6, 2011. The data in this report were generatedby identifying employers in each county with 10 - 499 employees. Fromthis list, Business Services Representatives were instructed to randomlyselect businesses to survey in their geographic area. A surveyinstrument containing eleven (11) questions was developed with theflexibility to be completed either on-line, via a response to a hard copysent by mail, response to an email attachment, by telephone interview,or by personal interview. The survey was limited to eleven questionswith the theory that a higher response rate would be obtained with abrief questionnaire. The survey instrument was also designed to be userfriendly, incorporating check boxes for most questions. Respondentswere given the opportunity to add additional comments by responding toquestion #11 at the end of the survey. Of the 1,152 valid surveyscollected, two hundred thirty-nine (239) respondents submitted writtencomments in response to question #11. Some of their input is includedin text boxes throughout this report.By using the Sample Size Calculator developed by Raosoft,Incorporated, we determined that a sample of 382 valid surveys wouldneed to be completed to render a 95% confidence level and alsomaintain a 5% margin of error. Collecting a sample of 1,152 surveysyielded three times the minimum sample needed and gave us a 2.85%margin of error and a 95% confidence level.The following charts illustrate the responses captured from the 1,152surveys that were validated. We have listed only the primary responsesto the survey questions. A copy of the survey questionnaire and otherdata are attached to this report in the AppendicesBusiness Categories Responding4I-4Page 284