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.
SPSS
*** Notice ***
Starting with the 2020 GSS (panel and cross sectional data), the GSS team no longer provides updates to the SPSS version of the GSS data file. The SPSS format has a limitation in missing value assignments that makes difficult to implement consistent missing values. In other popular software, such as Stata and SAS, it is easy to use the same missing codes (.d, .n, .i) across all variables. Moreover, we have added new missing codes resulting from adaptation implemented to the 2020 GSS: the skip on the web mode (.s), and the unavailability in given years (.y) or current release of the data (.x). This makes the total number of missing values in the GSS data exceed the maximum of three missing values allowed in SPSS. Users can still use the GSS data in SPSS by importing the Stata and SAS files; however, SPSS users should be aware that all missing values (DK, NA, IAP, and the new missing values added in 2020) will be automatically recoded to SYSMIS (.) in SPSS after importing.
Cumulative Data Set (cross-sectional samples from all years)
GSS 1972-2018 Cross-Sectional Cumulative Data (Release 3, May 27, 2020)
GSS 1972-2018 Cross-Sectional Cumulative Data (Release 3, May 27, 2020) - With GSS Codebook
The cumulative data file is also available via SDA, The Roper Center, ICPSR, and the GSS Data Explorer.
Merged Single-Year Data Sets (cross-sectional and all panels)
Other
General Social Survey (1978-2010) was linked to death records from the National Death Index (NDI). The indicator of possible vital status as of 2014 (variable name: DEATH) is now part of the GSS data you can download from the links above. However, because of the potential for deductive disclosure, in order to obtain more specific information, researchers need to complete a formal application to work with the GSS "sensitive" or restrictive data. Please refer to “Obtaining GSS Sensitive Data Files”.
Alerts
The SPSS student version, which can handle up to 50 variables and 1500 cases, cannot open the GSS data files.
Please note that there are three missing values in the data:
- IAP: Inapplicable. Respondents who are not asked to answer a specific question are assigned to IAP.
- DK: Don't know
- NA: No answer
