The Future of Entrepreneurship Research Includes Online Panel Data—If Used Correctly

As online panel data (OPD) become more widely used across the behavioral sciences, editors, reviewers, and researchers in entrepreneurship are asking whether it has a legitimate place in our field. We believe the answer is yes—provided three conditions are met. First, the online panel’s participants and definition of entrepreneur must match the research question. Second, studies must incorporate best practices for sample verification. Third, generalizability must be explicitly addressed as part of the study (or set of studies). If researchers do these things, OPD can meaningfully advance both theory and practice in entrepreneurship research. That said, real questions remain. What kinds of studies are suitable for OPD? Who are these respondents, and are they who they say they are? Are they human, and are they entrepreneurs as commonly defined in the literature? Our recommendations and checklist aim to enable entrepreneurship researchers to answer these questions and make informed choices when collecting data and publishing results using OPD.