This survey, the fourth in a series funded by the Federal Reserve Board, collected financial data from the year 2003 about businesses with fewer than 500 employees. A stratified systematic sample of small businesses was selected from the files of Dun & Bradstreet and screened for eligibility. Interviews were completed with 4,268 of these firms. The data are used to assess the availability of credit for small businesses; study the effects of bank mergers, bank consolidations, and interstate banking on credit use by small businesses; provide important financial statement data for small businesses that are not otherwise available; review the validity of operating definitions of geographic and product markets used in antitrust analysis of banking markets; and monitor technological and competitive changes in markets for financial services used by small businesses. Every five years, the resulting analyses are incorporated into a report from the Federal Reserve Board to Congress on the availability of credit to small businesses.