The General Social Surveys

The National Data Program for the Social Sciences is a social indicators and data diffusion program. Both the General Social Survey (GSS) and the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) surveys have been efficiently collected, widely distributed, and extensively analyzed by social scientists around the world. The GSS is divided into five components: the replicating core, topical modules, cross-national modules, experiments, and reinterviews and follow-up studies. The GSS has spurred cross-national research by inspiring other nations to develop similar data collection programs. GSS respondents have been reinterviewed as part of both methodological and substantive studies. The methodological uses have included studies of reliability, cognition, and wording and context. The GSS is widely used in teaching at undergraduate and graduate levels. The GSS produces top-quality, representative data for the United States, and through the ISSP in many other countries on topics of fundamental importance to the social sciences is extremely widely used in both teaching and research.