The Roper Center for Public Opinion Research has released the latest update to the General Social Survey, providing longitudinal survey microdata for 24 years between 1972 and 2002. The current GSS data sets, in ASCII text and SPSS portable formats with PDF-format codebook, are available for downloading by Penn students, faculty, and staff through the Penn Library Web.

NOTE! The Penn Library Web GSS main entry hyperlinks to the ICPSR-hosted Survey Data Analysis interface for GSS 1972-2000 data crosstabulation and subsetting: this web site has not been updated. The "Quick download" hyperlinks to the current codebook and microdata from the GSS 1972-2002 Roper Center edition.

The GSS, conducted by the National Opinion Research Center, is the principal longitudinal study of American society, its structure and functioning, and other social indicators, including attitudes, behaviors, and other attributes. Oversamples have allowed researchers to investigate subgroups within the general U.S. population. Since 1985, the GSS has included a battery of questions from the International Social Survey Program, permitting cross-national comparisons of social trends.

The GSS was conducted more or less annually between 1972 and 1994 and now biennially from 1994 to the present. In recent years, approximately 2,800 individuals have been sampled for each survey; the 2002 survey presents 1,008 variables. The complete 24-year data set includes responses from 43,698 individuals, presented as 4,209 variables.

For more information:
Lauris Olson, Social Sciences Bibliographer