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exit year cohort except FY 2017, and responses that indicated the entity is still bidding for work were represented in the top three reasons for exit every fiscal year. As reflected in the earlier results, DoD bureaucracy and a cumbersome solicitation process were the top two unfavorable DoD characteristics reported every year except FY 2016. Therefore, any past interventions to address the top reasons for contractor exodus and difficulty working with DoD appear to have been ineffective, at least within this time frame. This demonstrates a clear opportunity for targeted intervention since contractors are primarily exiting for the same reasons and identifying the same unfavorable characteristics of working with DoD year after year. The only caveat to this conclusion is that these contractors exited the DIB years ago, some as long ago as FY 2016, and thus, some of the concerns noted by respondents may have subsequently been or are already being addressed by DoD. Responses from Exiting Contractors Across Size Due to potential concerns regarding the high number of smaller businesses in the survey sample, the authors performed a chi-square test of independence to examine the relation between contractor size and the responses to the question regarding the primary reason why the contractor no longer had an existing prime contract with DoD. Contractors were dichotomized between those reporting net revenue of below $500k ( N = 313, 46% of the sample) and all others. Answer choices were dichotomized between the most critical answer choice (“The entity stopped bidding for work with DoD due to an unfavorable characteristic of working with DoD”) and all other answer choices. The test showed no significant association between contractor size and the answer choices: X 2 (1, N = 668) = .224, p = .636. Furthermore, both Phi ( Φ = .018, p = .636) and Cramer’s V ( ϕ c = .018, p = .636) showed that the weak associations between these variables were nonsignificant. This test was repeated to examine contractors reporting net revenue less than $5M ( N = 524) and less than $20M ( N = 623) against all others, with similar nonsignificant results: $5M: X 2 (1, N = 668) = .166, p = .683 and $20M: X 2 (1, N = 668) = .124, p = .725. In summary, the size of the contractor did not appear to influence how they answered the central survey question. Limitations Several limitations of the study are worth noting. First, the study had to rely on a single SAM.gov static file downloaded in 2021 because
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Defense ARJ, Summer 2025, Vol. 32 No. 2: 194—223
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