Abstract Since l972, the General Social Survey (GSS) has provided yearly data on a representative sample of American's attitudes, behaviors, and socio-demographic characteristics. (The sole exceptions, due to budgetary constraints, were in l979 and l981.) These surveys provide data sets that are very widely used by social scientists, especially to examine recent trends in American society. Because the core of the GSS is a set of questions that is identically repeated each year, the survey provides a uniquely valuable source of trend data for the research community. The value of the GSS is also enhanced by the speed with which it is distributed to the research community. Each year's survey is pretested in the Winter, conducted in the Spring, and made available to universities around the country in the Fall. Thus, the data are available during the year in which the survey was conducted. In addition, its complete documentation and easy access have made the GSS very widely used in the training of young scientists. In addition to a core of replicated items, each year's GSS includes a unique module which either repeats portions of a classic study conducted 20 to 30 years previously and/or a module which addresses a topic of special interest to the research community. Recently included topics include batteries of questions pertaining to respondents' socio-political participation and their attitudes toward poverty. Current plans tentatively call for future modules on religion and family. The analyses of these special topics is greatly facilitated by the inclusion of the core items because they provide a wide range of attitudinal, behavioral and demographic variables to be related to the items in the module. Each year's GSS also includes a module that is developed by an international board of scientists. This international collaboration began in l980, and involved the principal investigators of the GSS and several social scientists from (ZUMA) in West Germany. They met to work on the design of a West German survey to be modeled after the GSS, and they agreed to include common modules on such topics as family life and job values in their respective countries' surveys. British and Australian scientists were next to join the international research group, and scientists from five other European nations are expected to join in the next few years. These collaborative activities are building a data set that will greatly promote systematic cross-national research on topics of mutual interest to social scientists of different nationalities. This award is for the first year of a five year cycle of the General Social Survey, to be conducted between l988 and l992.
