One in Five Americans Consider Themselves “Entrepreneurs”

An exclusive study for Entrepreneur Magazine’s November issue, Ipsos and Entrepreneur examined how Americans self-identify as entrepreneurs. More than one in five Americans (22%) strongly identify with the term. Men (29%) are almost twice as likely as women (16%) to consider themselves entrepreneurial.

The study also looked at what American adults consider a failure in business, and to what degree they hold the entrepreneurs personally responsible for those failures. Finally, the study asked about the barriers to starting a business, and the best responses to business failures.

Topline results are available for download on the right side of the page.

These are findings from an Ipsos poll conducted August 25-26, 2016. For the survey, a sample of roughly 1,007 adults age 18+ from the continental U.S., Alaska and Hawaii was interviewed online in English.

The sample for this study was randomly drawn from Ipsos’s online panel (see link below for more info on “Access Panels and Recruitment”), partner online panel sources, and “river” sampling (see link below for more info on the Ipsos “Ampario Overview” sample method) and does not rely on a population frame in the traditional sense. Ipsos uses fixed sample targets, unique to each study, in drawing sample. After a sample has been obtained from the Ipsos panel, Ipsos calibrates respondent characteristics to be representative of the U.S. Population using standard procedures such as raking-ratio adjustments. The source of these population targets is U.S. Census 2015 American Community Survey data. The sample drawn for this study reflects fixed sample targets on demographics. Post-hoc weights were made to the population characteristics on gender, age, region, race/ethnicity and income.

Statistical margins of error are not applicable to online polls. All sample surveys and polls may be subject to other sources of error, including, but not limited to coverage error and measurement error. Where figures do not sum to 100, this is due to the effects of rounding. The precision of Ipsos online polls is measured using a credibility interval. In this case, the poll has a credibility interval of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points for all respondents (see link below for more info on Ipsos online polling “Credibility Intervals”). Ipsos calculates a design effect (DEFF) for each study based on the variation of the weights, following the formula of Kish (1965). This study had a credibility interval adjusted for design effect of the following (n=2,010, DEFF=1.5, adjusted Confidence Interval=5).