|
National Survey of Small Business Finances SSBF index |
The 1987 National Survey of Small Business Finances (NSSBF) is the first survey of small businesses in the United States to be conducted by the Board of Governors and the U.S. Small Business Administration. The survey collected information on the use of financial services and institutions for a nationally representative sample of firms (main sample) and a sample of firms with SBA-guaranteed loans (SBA sample). The target population was nonfinancial, nonfarm small business firms with fewer than 500 employees. This site contains the codebook, questionnaire, and the full 1987 public data set.
Methodology Reports and Papers
Methodology Report
The methodology report, by Research Triangle Institute, describes the survey from inception to final data collection and the methodologies employed, including sampling, weighting, questionnaire design, pretesting, interviewing, and response.
Report (6.7 MB PDF)
Banking Markets and the Use of Financial Services by Small and
Medium-Sized Businesses
Gregory E. Elliehausen and John D. Wolken
Federal Reserve Bulletin, vol. 76 (October 1990),
pp.801-17.
Article (1.9 MB PDF)
The National Survey of Small Business Finances: Description and
Preliminary Evaluation
Brenda G. Cox, Gregory E. Elliehausen and John D. Wolken
Finance and Economics Discussion Series 1989-93, Board of Governors
of the Federal Reserve System, 1989.
Article (2.0 MB PDF)
Documentation
Two types of technical documentation for the 1987 NSSBF are available: the
1987 technical manual and codebook and the main study questionnaire.
Technical Manual and Codebook for the 1987 National Survey of Small
Business Finances
The codebook contains a summary of technical features of the survey design, a
description of the data editing and imputations, and definitions of the
variables. Note: When uncompressed, the WordPerfect version of the
codebook requires approximately 303 KB of disk space.
Codebook (45 KB WordPerfect 6.0 PKZIP
compression)
| (160 KB PDF)
Survey Questionnaire
Here is the text of the questionnaire used for the interviews. The text
includes the verbatim questions, prompts employed during the computer-assisted
telephone interview, and all skip patterns. Note: When uncompressed,
the WordPerfect version of the questionnaire requires approximately 193 KB of
disk space.
Questionnaire (33 KB WordPerfect 6.0 PKZIP
compression)
| (120 KB PDF)
Survey Data
The survey data available here are contained in either a SAS transport file
or an ASCII flat (rectangular) file. The whole data set consists of two
samples, and each sample has its own data file. See the codebook above for
more information concerning the sampling.
SAS Transport File
The SAS transport file is compressed in two ways: Unix compressed (.Z) and
PKZIP (.ZIP). Note: When uncompressed, the SAS transport file
requires approximately 33 MB of disk space for the main sample and 4 MB for
the SBA sample. Examples of programs to convert from the SAS transport file
to a SAS data set on the Unix and Windows platforms are provided in the file
transport.
SAS data for PCs: main sample (1.2 MB .ZIP)
SAS data for PCs: SBA sample (174 KB .ZIP)
SAS data for Unix: main sample (1.1 MB
.Z)
SAS data for Unix: SBA sample (169 KB .Z)
ASCII Flat File
The ASCII flat file is also compressed in two ways: Unix compressed (.Z )
and PKZIP (.ZIP). Note: The PC version of both the main sample and
the SBA sample, when left zipped, should fit onto one diskette.
Further information regarding the ASCII flat file (18.5 KB ASCII)
List of variables (11 KB ASCII)
ASCII data for PCs: main sample (803 KB
.ZIP)
ASCII data for PCs: SBA sample (110 KB
.ZIP)
ASCII data for Unix: main sample (744 KB
.Z)
ASCII data for Unix: SBA sample (101 KB
.Z)
Comments, questions, or problems?
Please contact us.