The use of Financial Ratios for Research:
Problems Associated with and Recommendations for Using Large Databases

Introduction
The use of financial ratio analysis for understanding and predicting the performance of privately owned business firms is gaining in importance in published research. Perhaps the major problem faced by researchers is the difficulty of obtaining an adequate sample of representative financial statements with many studies using 50 or fewer firms for analysis. However, when larger databases are used, it is important to know that they have problems as well and that adjustments to these samples must be made to permit the use of multivariate analysis techniques.
Understanding how to properly use large databases for ratio analysis will become of importance now that the Kauffman Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership (KCEL) has developed a financial statement database of more than 400,000 privately owned firms with a significant number of these including a base year and three operating years of financial statements. This database is currently available to a team of scholars working closely with the KCEL on selected internal studies. It is expected that this database will become generally available to researchers and this source of financial statement information is likely to become the standard for financial performance research in the future. For the first time, scholars will have a large commonly available database of privately owned firm financial statements that will provide direct comparisons between research findings and research formulation. The advantage of having a large database that is readily available to researchers is easily understood. However, it is equally important to know the shortcomings and needed adjustments of large databases if meaningful research findings are to be achieved. The problems common to large