Final demographic For the most part, we had a relatively even distribution of our independent variables (years of experience, department, product type and company size). Location was the only variable that presented an exceedingly 6
large discrepancy between groups : •
Years of experience: less than 5 years (17% or 34 resp.), 6 to 10 years (29% or 57 resp.), 11 to 15 years (29% or 57 resp.), more than 15 years (26% or 52 resp.)
•
Department: design (56% or 112 resp.), non-‐design (44% or 88 resp.)
•
Type of product: durables (59% or 118 resp.), non-‐durables (41% or 82 resp.)
•
Company size7: micro (38% or 75 resp.), SME (39% or 77 resp.), large (24% or 48 resp.)
•
Location: Europe (70% or 140 resp.), North America (16% or 31 resp.), South America (15% or 29 resp.)
In order to make the results more manageable, some categories had to be reclassified into smaller groups. With ‘department’, for example, seven possible choices (Design, Marketing, Planning, Engineering, Production, Administrative and Other) were reduced to only two choices in the analysis (‘design’ and ‘non-‐design’). It is important to note that those changes did not represent any disturbance in the examination of survey results. The table in appendix 032 (App. 03) describes the final demographic of the survey with more details.
4.2.2 Cross-analysis Once the data was filtered, we applied a series of simple cross-‐references on Excel using pivot-‐tables. We did a brief trial with more traditional statistical tools, such as SPSS software, but Excel was considered a simpler and more straightforward tool since the researcher was already familiar with that particular type of analysis. In order to ensure the quality of the quantitative analysis, besides referring to related literature, the researcher has also consulted statisticians and people who were familiar with this type of analysis.
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Those ‘distortions’ or ‘vices’ in the resulted sample were also carefully considered in the analysis. Definitions are as follows: Micro (less than 10 employees), SME (between 10 and 2,500 employees) and Large (more than 2,500
employees). This classification was created by the researcher, based on the original definition for SMEs, according to the European Commission (2003). A figure of the original document can be found in appendix 04.
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