The Kauffman Foundation wanted to better understand perspectives among entrepreneurship researchers.  

With increased attention on the impact of professional attitudes and viewpoints in academic settings, it is important to understand perspectives not only at individual institutions, but also across academic disciplines. Investigating the professional climate among entrepreneurship scholars is challenging because of the field's broad nature. Entrepreneurship researchers work in many diverse disciplines--anthropology, economics, finance, management, organizational development, public policy, psychology, and sociology--with no single scholarly association uniting them. At the same time, many entrepreneurship scholars have been calling on their peers to take more critical and expansive approaches to entrepreneurship research; to diversify the subject matter and contexts in which it is studied; and to focus on how intersections of race, gender, and other social factors affect entrepreneurship in practice and as an academic discipline. 

NORC embarked on a survey of scholars of entrepreneurship and innovation. 

With funding from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, a leading supporter of entrepreneurship education and scholarship, NORC at the University of Chicago designed and administered a survey to assess the professional culture and climate among scholars and researchers who study entrepreneurship and innovation. Our work examined: 

• the academic background and career status of entrepreneurship scholars
  
• assessments of the perceived climate among other entrepreneurship scholars and within their “home” discipline (anthropology, economics, finance, management, etc.)
  
• perceptions of editors, reviewers, and funders of entrepreneurship research and scholarship
  
• scholars’ experiences with mentoring and editorial positions
  
• the effects of COVID-19 and other events from 2020 to 2021 on scholars’ research efforts and agendas