General Social Survey

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The General Social Survey (GSS) is a sociological survey created in 1972 by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago and funded by the National Science Foundation. The GSS collects information biannually and keeps a historical record of the concerns, experiences, attitudes, and practices of residents of the United States.

Since 1972, the GSS has been monitoring societal change and studying the growing complexity of American society. It is one of the most influential studies in social sciences and is frequently referenced in news media, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and the Associated Press.^[1]

The data collected for this survey includes both demographic information and respondents' opinions on matters ranging from government spending to the state of race relations to the existence and nature of God. Because of the wide range of topics covered and the comprehensive gathering of demographic information, survey results allow social scientists to correlate demographic factors like age, race, gender, and urban/rural upbringing with beliefs and thereby determine whether, for example, an average middle-aged black male respondent would be more or less likely to move to a different U.S. state for economic reasons than a similarly situated white female respondent; or whether a highly educated person with a rural upbringing is more likely to believe in a transcendent God than a person with an urban upbringing and only a high school education.

In 2011, the GSS was linked to the National Death Index. This freely available dataset allows researchers to explore the association between variables in the General Social Survey and human longevity. For instance, it is possible to explore the association between happiness and life expectancy.^[2] The dataset and codebook are available for download to the public.