The General Social Survey (GSS) is a national data program for the social sciences that charts social indicators and provides scientific data for analysis by literally thousands of students and researchers. Since 1972 the GSS has conducted 19 independent cross-sectional surveys of the adult household population of the United States. In 1994 and 1996, the GSS employed a scientifically ambitious and cost-effective biennial double-sample design that essentially administered two surveys simultaneously in alternate years. This design will be continued under the present grant, with pairs of surveys in 1998 and 2000. The General Social Survey has three fundamental aims. First, it gathers and disseminates data on contemporary American Society. These data allow social scientists to monitor and explain trends and constants in attitudes, behaviors, and social attributes of individuals and families. They also permit scientists to examine the structure and functioning of society in general as well as the roles played by various sub-groups. Second, because other nations have emulated the GSS in their own surveys, the GSS permits social scientists to contrast the United States with other societies in order to place American society in comparative perspective and develop cross-national models of human society. Third, the GSS makes high quality data easily accessible to scholars, students, policy makers, and others with minimal cost and waiting. The GSS is divided into six components: 1) the replicating core of items, 2) topical modules, 3) cross-national modules, 4) mini-modules and supplements, 5) experiments in survey methodology, and 6) reinterviews and follow-up studies. The GSS is open to submissions of items from any of the social sciences, and a Board of Overseers, composed of expert survey methodologists and survey researchers, works with the principal investigators to select the most scientifically valuable items and modules for inclusion in each interview schedule. The General Social Su rvey is a primary source of data for many branches of social science, second only to the US census in frequency of use by sociologists. More than 3,000 publications and scientific reports have been based on the GSS, and articles employing the GSS continue to be published in central social-science journals at a rapid rate. Directly or indirectly, policy-makers rely upon the GSS as an unbiased source of information about the changing nature of American society. The present grant will continue this important scientific tradition into the twenty-first century. 23
