An Education Needs Assessment of CARIFORUM Firms

SECTION II: PRIMARY RESEARCH REPORT

Introduction

This section identifies the region’s current skills training needs based on primary research. It

contains the following subsections: notably, the methodology outlining the primary research tools

used, a presentation and discussion of the findings, and concludes with an analysis based on current

and previous findings from the primary and desk research with the aim of providing an overview

of the report’s key fin dings.

2.1 Methodology

2.1.1 Research Design, Context and Sampling

A cross-sectional survey research design was employed, using an online semi-structured survey

instrument, to gather key segments of data on critical educational and training needs, preferences

and other related data from a representative sample of businesses within the CARIFORUM

community in the region,

From these territories, information on the total number of business support organisations (BSOs)

and the size of their business membership was sought and assessed to ascertain a representative,

stratified sample. Essentially, the reliance on BSOs in each country was instrumental to

identifying a suitable sample size for each country. Based on a total of 1,151,317 businesses

identified across these fifteen countries, and in light of the need to safeguard an acceptable margin

of error between 3 to 5 per cent in this exercise, an overall sample size target of at least 740

businesses was chosen (see Table 10 for population distribution of targeted businesses and Table

11 for sample size targets/minimum quotas by country and actual responses received).

The total population of businesses under selected BSOs in a given country constituted the initial

target of the survey exercise. It is worth mentioning that a combination of random and

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