The General Social Survey is recruiting individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing to participate in a brief interview study to improve the accessibility of the GSS website and the GSS Data Explorer. If you, or someone you know, is a STEM researcher who uses online survey data and/or who uses GSS data, please email GSSaccessibility@norc.org to determine your eligibility.
For five decades, the General Social Survey (GSS) has studied the growing complexity of American society. It is the only full-probability, personal-interview survey designed to monitor changes in both social characteristics and attitudes currently being conducted in the United States.
The General Social Survey (GSS) is a nationally representative survey of adults in the United States conducted since 1972. The GSS collects data on contemporary American society in order to monitor and explain trends in opinions, attitudes and behaviors. The GSS has adapted questions from earlier surveys, thereby allowing researchers to conduct comparisons for up to 80 years.
The GSS contains a standard core of demographic, behavioral, and attitudinal questions, plus topics of special interest. Among the topics covered are civil liberties, crime and violence, intergroup tolerance, morality, national spending priorities, psychological well-being, social mobility, and stress and traumatic events.
Altogether, the GSS is the single best source for sociological and attitudinal trend data covering the United States. It allows researchers to examine the structure and functioning of society in general, as well as the role played by relevant subgroups and to compare the United States to other nations.
The GSS aims to make high-quality data easily accessible to scholars, students, policy-makers, and others, with minimal cost and waiting.
The GSS has carried out an extensive range of methodological research designed both to advance survey methods in general and to insure that the GSS data are of the highest possible quality. In pursuit of this goal, more than 130 papers have been published in the GSS Methodological Reports series.
The ISSP, a cross-national collaboration conducting scientific surveys on diverse topics relevant to social science, evolved out of bilateral collaboration between NORC and the German organization Zentrum für Umfragen, Methoden, und Analysen (ZUMA; now part of GESIS-Leibniz Institute of the Social Sciences). Starting in 1982, each organization devoted a small segment of their national surveys, ALLBUS and GSS, to a common set of questions. The ISSP was formally established in 1984 by Australia, Germany, Great Britain, and the United States, and it now has 42 member countries across five continents and collects data in 70 countries. Each country’s designated ISSP institution may decide what survey vehicle to field for the ISSP module each year, as long as data collection follows an approved methodology. As the only U.S. member of the ISSP, NORC actively participates in ISSP’s international network, working to establish a framework for international cooperation that promotes measurement consistency and strict quality standards to allow investigation of social change in a cross-national frame of reference. Recently, the NORC team was selected as convener of the ISSP 2023 Drafting Group on National Identity and Citizenship. NORC also chairs the ISSP’s methods group on weighting, and it is a member of the methods group on nonresponse. For more information on the ISSP, please visit: www.issp.org.
The National Congregations Study is a hypernetwork sample of religious congregations collected in 1998, 2006, 2012 and 2018. In each of the four waves, the research has been done in conjunction with the GSS, documenting the work, programs, and activities of America's religious congregations. This survey was conducted by NORC in collaboration with Professor Mark Chaves at Duke University.
The GSS and its PIs have been received awards from the American Association for Public Opinion Research, the American Sociological Association, the Eastern Sociological Society, the World Association for Public Opinion Research, and American Demographics and Science magazines.
NORC at the University of Chicago conducts research and analysis that decision-makers trust. As a nonpartisan research organization and a pioneer in measuring and understanding the world, we have studied almost every aspect of the human experience and every major news event for more than eight decades. Today, we partner with government, corporate, and nonprofit clients around the world to provide the objectivity and expertise necessary to inform the critical decisions facing society. Learn more
Below is a list of GSS Advisors and Board members (*=current Board members). The GSS Board is governed by the Board charter.
GSS Board (1983 - )
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Robert Abelson |
Barbara Entwisle |
Nancy Landale |
Robert Schoeni |
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Richard Alba |
Glenn Firebaugh |
Julia Lane |
Howard Schuman |
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Margarita Alegria |
Claude Fischer |
Hedwig Lee* |
Christine Schwartz |
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Duane Alwin |
Lorrie Frasure* |
Taeku Lee |
David Sears |
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Jennifer Barber* |
Jeremy Freese |
Jeff Manza |
Judith Seltzer |
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James Beniger |
Claudine Gay |
Robert Mare |
James Short |
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Andrew Gelman |
Margaret Marini |
Lynn Smith-Lovin |
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Suzanne Bianchi |
Norval Glenn |
Peter Marsden |
Joe Spaeth |
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Judith Blake |
Bridget Goosby |
Elizabeth Martin |
Jan Stets |
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Lawrence Bobo |
Robert Groves |
Karen Mason |
Seymour Sudman |
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Jennie Brand |
David Grusky |
Leslie McCall |
David Takeuchi |
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Lawrence Bumpass |
Darrick Hamilton |
Stephen L. Morgan |
Judith Tanur |
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Traci Burch |
Kathleen Mullan Harris |
John Mueller |
Florencia Torche |
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Ronald Burt |
David Harris |
Robert Nelson |
Judith Treas |
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Karen Campbell |
Robert Hauser |
Kristen Olson* |
Andrea Tyree |
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Richard Campbell |
Pam Herd |
Lisa Pearce* |
Christopher Uggen |
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Deborah Carr |
Jennifer Hochschild |
Brea Perry |
Stephen Vaisey* |
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Camille Charles |
Michael Hout |
Bernice Pescosolido |
Linda Waite |
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Mark Chaves |
Vincent Hutchings |
Becky Pettit |
Michael Wagner* |
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Phillip Cohen |
Herbert Hyman |
Brian Powell |
John Robert Warren |
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Stephen Cutler |
Mary Jackman |
Stanley Presser |
Bruce Western |
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William A. Darity |
Christopher Jencks |
Rashawn Ray* |
Kim Weeden (Chair)* |
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Michael Dawson |
Arne Kalleberg |
Barbara Reskin |
Melissa Wilde |
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Rodolfo de la Garza |
James Kluegel |
John Robinson |
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Louis Desipio |
David Knoke |
Vincent Roscigno* |
Stephen Withey |
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Paul DiMaggio |
Frauke Kreuter |
Peter Rossi |
Rebeca Wong |
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Gregory Duncan |
Jon Krosnick |
Ruben Rumbaut |
James Wright |
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Jennifer Dykema* |
Maria Krysan |
Robert Sampson |
Robert Wuthnow |
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Nora Cate Schaeffer |
Yu Xie |
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Jason Schnittker |
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Board of Methodological Advisors (1977-1983)
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Duane Alwin |
Norman Bradburn |
Howard Schuman |
Seymour Sudman |
Board of Advisors (1972-1983)
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Herbert Blalock |
Stephen Cutler |
Otis Dudley Duncan |
David Featherman |
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Philip Hastings |
Herbert Hyman |
David Knoke |
Otto Larsen |
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Karen Mason |
John Mueller |
Norval Glenn |
John Robinson |
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James Short |
Stephen Withey |
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James A. Davis (1929-2016)
James A. Davis was the founder of the General Social Survey (GSS) and a GSS principal investigator from 1971 to 2009. When he won the 1992 American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) Award for Exceptionally Distinguished Achievement, he was cited for “his innovations in teaching, his prodigious scholarship, [and] his creation of the General Social Survey.”
Davis received a BS in journalism from Northwestern University in 1950. He then obtained his MA from the University of Wisconsin in 1952 and his PhD from Harvard University in 1955. In 1957, Davis came to the University of Chicago as an assistant professor and National Opinion Research Center (NORC) researcher. While he moved back and forth between Chicago, Dartmouth, and Harvard over the next 50 years (Chicago-Harvard-Chicago-Dartmouth-Chicago-Dartmouth-Harvard-Chicago), he never left NORC. From 1971 to 1975, he served as NORC’s director.
Also, in 1971 Davis developed an idea for a National Data Program for the Social Sciences. Reflecting the social indicators movement of that time, it called for the annual monitoring of social change across a range of important social matters, such as intergroup relations, gender roles, and civil liberties, and the distribution of those data to all interested researchers without cost or delay. The Russell Sage Foundation and the National Science Foundation supported the proposal—and so the GSS was launched in 1972.
As his winning of both the American Sociological Association (ASA) Teaching Award and the AAPOR Distinguished Achievement Award attests, Davis’s career has been marked by well-deserved rewards. But for the real reward of survey research, Davis can speak for himself. As he noted in Sociologists at Work:
"There is a lot of misery in surveys, most of the time and money going into monotonous clerical and statistical routines, with interruptions only for squabbles with the client, budget crises, petty machinations for a place in the academic sun, and social casework with neurotic graduate students. And nobody ever reads the final report. Those few moments, however, when a new set of tables comes up from the machine room and questions begin to be answered; when relationships actually hold under controls; when the pile of tables on the desk suddenly meshes to yield a coherent chapter; when in a flash you realize you have found out something about something important that nobody ever knew before -- these are the moments that justify research."
Has NORC contacted you to participate in the General Social Survey? If so, be sure to check out our Survey Participants page to learn more about the GSS, how your responses will be used and why your voice matters!
NORC at the University of Chicago is giving social scientists and other researchers an easy way to fold social media conversations into their research projects with the launch of its General Social Media Archive. The Archive complements NORC’s long-running, highly influential General Social Survey (GSS).
That explains why consumers say they feel as bad as they did in the financial-crisis year of 2009, a recent Gallup poll showed. For the first time, Americans who say they are "not too happy" outnumber those who say they're "very happy," according to a survey from the nonprofit group NORC at the University of Chicago.
Twenty-four percent of Americans reported they were “not too happy” in life in 2021, up from 13% in 2018, according to the General Social Survey, a sociological survey conducted by research organization NORC at the University of Chicago. The share of those who said they were “very happy” declined to 19% from 31% over the same period.
