|
Survey of Small Business Finances SSBF index |
The 2003 Survey of Small Business Finances (SSBF) is the fourth survey of U.S. small businesses conducted by the Board of Governors. The survey collected information on firm and owner characteristics, an inventory of small businesses' use of financial services and of their financial service suppliers, and income and balance sheet information. The content of the 2003 survey is similar to the 1998 survey; however the 2003 survey also provides some new information unavailable in previous surveys. In particular, the survey collected demographic characteristics for up to three individual owners and thereby helped to refine the firm-level measurement of characteristics such as race, ethnicity, sex, and ownership concentration. In addition, the survey collected information on the use of nonstandard work arrangements by firms and about their use of credit and debit card processing. Please consult the 2003 Codebook and Survey Questionnaire for more information.
This site contains methodology reports, working papers and technical studies, database documentation including a codebook and annotated questionnaire,
and the full 2003 public data set.
Methodology Reports
Methodology Report (1,365 KB PDF) | Screen Reader Version
Methodology Report Appendices ( 9 MB PDF WINZIP compression) | Screen Reader Version
Note: The PDF zipped methodology report appendices requires approximately 9 MB of disk space.
The methodology report, by the
National
Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago (NORC), describes the survey from
inception to final data collection and the methodologies employed, including
sampling, weighting, questionnaire design, pretesting, interviewing, and
response. The appendices for the report are in a separate document.
Methodology Report Errata (32 KB PDF) | Screen Reader Version
In processing the final data, 28 cases were found to be ineligible for the 2003 survey.
These cases were removed from the 4268 cases delivered by NORC, leaving the final sample of 4240.
The errata describes the process by which the final weights were adjusted after the methodology report had been completed.
Pretest 1 (351 KB PDF) | Screen Reader Version
The Pretest 1 Report describes the objectives of the first pretest. In addition, it provides an evaluation of how well each
objective was met and changes that resulted from the pretest.
Pretest 2 (239 KB PDF) | Screen Reader Version
The Pretest 2 Report describes the objectives of the second pretest. In addition, it provides an evaluation of how well each
objective was met and changes that resulted from the pretest.
Papers and Technical Studies
Financial Services Used by Small Businesses: Evidence from the 2003 Survey of
Small Business Finances
Traci L. Mach and John D. Wolken
Federal Reserve Bulletin, (October 2006), pp. 167-195.
Article can be found on the Federal Reserve Bulletin Index
Multiple Imputation in the Survey of Consumer Finances
Arthur B. Kennickell
Prepared for the August 1998 Joint Statistical Meetings, Dallas, TX.
Article can be found on SCF working papers and bibliography
Documentation
Two types of technical documentation for the 2003 SSBF are available: the
public use codebook and the annotated questionnaire. Both the codebook and the questionnaire are required
to understand the data set construction.
Codebook for the 2003 Survey of Small Business Finances
The codebook contains a summary of technical features of the survey, a
brief description of weighting, a description of how to use the account
and institution inventory data, a list of definitions of the variables, and an
index of the variables contained in the public data set.
Codebook (465 KB PDF) | Screen Reader Version
Survey Questionnaire
The questionnaire provided is a copy of the one that was used with Computer Assisted Telephone Interview (CATI) instrument.
The questionnaire has been edited to reflect the data editing changes and variables that were added, dropped, or moved.
The annotated text is in italics, bold, underlined and highlighted in order to stand out from the original text. These annotations can be found
to the right of most questions.
Questionnaire (1 MB PDF) | Screen Reader Version
Survey Data
The survey data available here are contained in either a SAS data set, or an ASCII flat (rectangular) file. Both data files are compressed and can be uncompressed using WINZIP or UNIX UNCOMPRESS.
Note: Other decompression programs have not been tested on these files.
SAS Data
The file containing the SAS data set is a compressed (.Z) file and must be uncompressed before use. When uncompressed, the SAS data set requires approximately 272 MB of disk space.
Note: The uncompressed file is NOT a SAS transport file. Earlier releases of SSBF data required PROC COPY to convert a SAS transport file into a SAS data set. Due to the limitations of PROC COPY, the 2003 data is provided as a SAS data set that can be read in by SAS version 7 or higher.
SAS data (13 MB .Z)
ASCII Flat File
The ASCII flat file is a compressed (.Z) file and must be uncompressed before use.
Further information regarding ASCII flat file
(35 KB ASCII)
Dictionary for ASCII data set (83 KB ASCII)
ASCII data (10 MB .Z)
Comments, questions, or problems?
Please contact us.