EAGER: Consumer Innovation Survey Development

在美国以外的国家进行的开创性研究发现，私人居民投入了大量的时间和金钱来创造创新产品和服务，供自己使用，有时也供他人使用。这些研究的结果表明，很少有人公开传播他们的创新，申请知识产权保护的人更少。如果这在美国是真的，那么创新者、企业和普通公众并没有充分利用美国创新者的创造力和聪明才智。不幸的是，没有严谨的研究承担了记录美国私人创新活动的普遍性和动态的任务。因此，我们对创造创新产品和服务的美国人的数量、他们创造的创新的数量、他们创新的动机、他们在创新活动中投入了多少时间和金钱以及他们是否传播了他们努力的成果知之甚少。本项目旨在通过以下方式填补这一知识空白：首先，开发并验证一种测量消费者创新活动的调查工具；其次，对美国成年人口的随机样本进行验证，以估计人口水平的消费者创新率。这个项目的结果将对其他研究人员有用，因为它将创建消费者创新活动的基线估计，未来的研究可以与之进行比较。研究结果也可能影响消费者创新的实践。通过识别阻碍个人向他人传播其创新和申请知识产权保护的因素，本研究可以为帮助个人克服这些障碍的公共政策提供信息。该项目的主要目标是开发一种工具和方法，以准确估计美国个人创造或修改消费产品的流行程度。次要目标包括更好地理解消费者创新的动机，开发消费者创新所消耗的个人资源，以及消费者创新者如何（以及多久）试图保护他们的创新和/或与他人分享他们的创新。计划进行两次数据收集。首先，在通过对预先确定为可能的创新者的个人进行认知访谈来完善调查工具草案之后，将对另外500个预先确定的可能的创新者进行修订后的调查。最初调查的数据将根据已知的基准进行验证，并且将对开放式项目进行编码以确保可靠性。第二次数据收集将从美国成年人中随机抽取3000份完整的问卷。通过使用美国成年人的样本，而不是从可能包括创新者的群体中抽样，结果将使调查工具作为估计人口水平创新活动率的工具得到验证。

Groundbreaking studies in countries outside the United States have observed that private individual residents invest substantial time and money creating innovative products and services for their own use, and sometimes for use by others. The results from these studies suggests that few individuals publicly diffuse their innovations, and fewer still apply for intellectual property protection. If this is true in the United States, then innovators, businesses, and the general public are not fully capitalizing on the creativity and ingenuity of American innovators. Unfortunately, no rigorous studies have undertaken the task of documenting the prevalence and dynamics of private innovation activities in the United States. As a result, we know little about the number of Americans creating innovative products and services, the number of innovations they create, their motivation for innovating, how much time and money they invest in innovation activities, and if they disseminate the results of their efforts. This project aims to fill this knowledge gap by: first, developing and validating a survey instrument to measure consumer innovation activities; and, second, administering the validated instrument to a random sample of the United States adult population in order to estimate population-level rates of consumer innovation. The results from this project will be useful to other researchers as it will create baseline estimates of consumer innovation activity against which future studies may be compared. The results may also influence the practice of consumer innovation. By identifying factors that impede private individuals from diffusing their innovations to others and from applying for intellectual property protection, this research can inform public policies that help individuals overcome these barriers. The primary objective of this project is to develop an instrument and methodology for accurately estimating the prevalence with which private individuals in the United States create or modify consumer products. Secondary objectives include developing better understandings of the motivations for consumer innovation, the personal resources expended in developing consumer innovations, and how (and how often) consumer innovators attempt to protect their innovations and/or share their innovations with others. Two data collections are planned. First, after refining a draft survey instrument through cognitive interviews with individuals who are pre-identified as likely innovators, the revised survey will be administered to another 500 pre-identified likely innovators. The data from this initial survey will be validated against known benchmarks, and open-ended items will be coded to ensure reliability. The second data collection will produce 3,000 completed questionnaires from a random sample of the U.S. adult population. By utilizing a sample of U.S. adults, rather than sampling from groups likely to include innovators, the results will enable the validation of the survey instrument as a tool for estimating population-level rates of innovation activity.