Sampling Minority Business Owners and Their Families: The Understudied Entrepreneurial Experience*

Abstract

We here review and critique prior research on minority entrepreneurship, paying particular attention to the contributions and limitations of deployed sampling techniques and research methodologies. As based on this review, we then introduce the 2003 and 2005 National Minority Business Owner Surveys—a comprehensive and primary data collection effort that used varied methodologies to secure in‐depth information about random national samples of African American, Korean American, and Mexican American populations as well as a comparison sample of nonminority business owners. We present the initial business ownership profiles developed with these recent data, in part, as a benchmark of the U.S. entrepreneurial experience, and compare the profiles with those presented in prior research. These profiles document similarities and differences across the four groups and provide an empirical foundation for understanding the origin of those similarities and differences. No longer can we ignore the in‐depth study of minority businesses and their owning families nor can we simply assume that all businesses are the same, regardless of minority status or ethnicity.