This dataset consists of the responses to a quantitative survey among the managers of Cultural and Creative Industries (CCIs) to collect data on their Strategic Management mind-set and practices, with special focus on performance evaluation. The questionnaire was composed using the core elements of a similar Danish study (Tscherning and Boxenbaum 2011) targeted at creative enterprises and a self-assessment tool introduced in the United States (BTW Consultants 2010).

A Likert-scale was used, thus the respondents had (in most of the cases) five options to choose from (from full agreement to total disagreement).  As the questionnaire was anonymous, there was no reason to believe that managers would intentionally hide their challenges or aspirations, or make their daily evaluation practices look better or worse than they are in reality.

The study was designed as a systematic sampling survey, which allowed making inferences about the whole population of CCIs in Estonia on the basis of a carefully selected subset. Since different umbrella organisations have an important role in providing information to CCIs, they were asked to spread the request to fill out the questionnaire. Also, the contact databases of Estonian Customs and Tax Board were used for sending requests to fill in the questionnaire. In total, the request with the link to the online questionnaire was delivered to approximately 2,000 contacts, whereas the response rate was approximately 23%. The online survey environment in Google Forms was accessible to participants for roughly two-and-a-half months (from mid-January until the end of March 2016).

This raw dataset (based on 503 responses) is in SPSS format, as the data was analysed using SPSS.