Design and validation of an instrument to statistically measure business growth

Abstract

The objective of this research is to design a questionnaire that allows measuring business growth in micro and small companies. The instrument was applied to 65 small and medium-sized companies through the analysis of the information collected, the main characteristics of the companies under study were determined and the growth factors that can be measured and evaluated and that are linked to the Business Growth. For this research the variables considered are the financial factor; measured by income, costs, profitability and investment, the technological factor; measured by adopting technology and updating systems, the competition factor; relationship with the environment, growth planning and competition in the market, the human resource factor measured by the specialization of human resources and growth of key employees, finally business growth, was measured through the number of employees, total assets and sales . The questionnaire was measured using a Likert-type scale with 5 response options. The hypothesis that this research is intended to test is that financial, technological, competition and human resource factors influence business growth. The research results show that the instrument is reliable according to the results of the pilot test, the constructs are statistically significant and therefore it is valid to test the hypothesis.