General social surveys

GSSDIRS
(General Social Survey Data and Information Retrieval System – USA)

The GSS - General Social Survey - is an almost annual personal interview survey of US households conducted by the National Opinion Research Center - NORC. They are designed as part of a programme of social indicator research, replicating questionnaire Items and wording in order to facilitate time-trend studies.

GSSDIRS is a joint project of the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research - ICPSR - and the NORC. The system made web based retrieval of the documentation and the extraction and analysis of the GSS cumulative file possible:

• search all GSS documents including bibliography, codebook main pages/codebook variables/subject index with related Mnemonics/module index

• browse the GSS codebooks e.g. by subject index: codebook includes frequencies of response over time and have links to the annotated bibliography of studies that have analysed each variable

• browse pre-built cross tabulations of variables over time by a "Trend index"

• data applications:

  • generate cross-tabs, frequencies, descriptive statistics

  • perform online sub-setting with conversion to portable formats

  • free download of GSS 1972-1994

Online data applications for the GSS also realized as results of recent in-house product developments at:

• University of California, Berkeley: SDA - Survey Documentation and Analysis - a set of programmes for web-based analysis of survey data.

  • the archive page with the GSS include additional datasets - Facilities:
    Browse codebook/cross tabulation/comparison of means and correlations/download a customised subset of variables/cases

• University of California, San Diego: SSDC - Social Science Data Collection

  • the 'Special data products' section contains several datasets: Facilities:
    Search for variables and extract data - with useful frames. Results include charts, tables and data formatted in ASCII or for spreadsheet or statistical software packages/search codebook.

ALLBUS
(General social survey – Germany)

The International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) is a continuous annual cross-national data collection project on annual basis since 1985. It brings together pre-existing social science projects and coordinates research goals, thereby adding a cross-national perspective to the individual national studies

BSA
(British Social Attitudes – Great Britain)

SCPRs - Social and Community Planning Research - British social attitudes surveys have been conducted annually since 1983. Each survey comprises over 3.500 interviews with a representative random sample of people in England, Scotland and Wales. It is funded by charitable and government sources and is regarded as the primary independent source of information and commentary about Britain's changing social values during the 1980s and 1990s.

PGSS
(Polish General Social Survey 1992-1993 – Poland)

The Polish General Social Survey is an ongoing program of statutory research at the Institute for Social Studies of the University of Warsaw (ISS UW).