FIELD and its predecessor program, the Self-Employment Learning Project, have engaged in a number of research efforts that have documented the outcomes experienced by individuals who have received assistance from microenterprise programs.  Although the various FIELD studies have differed in terms of the specific groups of entrepreneurs studied, the microenterprise programs participating in the research, and the set of outcomes that were tracked over time, there are two commonalities to these research efforts.  First, in each case the research methodology involved surveys of individual entrepreneurs.  Second, each research project also used a learning approach in which the microenterprise program staff was closely engaged in collecting and/or analyzing the outcomes data.

Publications

The following publications present the results of FIELD’s outcomes research.  Note that FIELD’s most recent research findings are listed first.

• Monitoring Client Outcomes: A Report from MicroTest's 2004 Data Collection. This publication examines changes in business enterprises and household incomes for a group of clients one year after they received a significant level of service from a microenterprise program. The findings are based on data collected on 813 clients from 17 programs that participate in FIELD’s MicroTest program. Staff of the programs surveyed clients in person or by phone using established protocols and a MicroTest Outcomes survey. The data collected was then analyzed and aggregated by MicroTest staff.
• Enhancing Opportunities for Entrepreneurship and Enhancing Economic Opportunity through Entrepreneurship. These two publications detail the findings from FIELD’s learning assessment of nine microenterprise programs that received funding from the Ms. Foundation’s Collaborative Fund for Women’s Economic Development. The assessment included grantee-conducted surveys of their microenterprise clients, to document changes in the clients’ personal and business situations. These reports can be downloaded free of charge from the Ms. Foundation’s Web site.
• Microenterprise Welfare to Work Client Outcomes. From 1998 through 2003, FIELD conducted a learning evaluation of ten microenterprise programs that were funded by the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation to provide services to recipients of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF).  FIELD issued a number of research reports and briefs detailing its findings regarding the outcomes of the welfare recipients tracked in this study.
• Microenterprise and the Poor:  Findings from the Self-Employment Learning Project Five Year Survey of Microentrepreneurs.  Published in 1999, this report details the summary findings from SELP’s study of 133 low-income individuals who received microenterprise assistance.  These low-income individuals were the clients of seven microenterprise programs which were, at the time of their selection to participate in SELP in 1991, among the senior microenterprise programs in the United States.