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.
The GSS has been a reliable source of data to help researchers, students, and journalists monitor and explain trends in American behaviors, demographics, and opinions. You'll find the complete GSS data set on this site, and can access the GSS Data Explorer to explore, analyze, extract, and share custom sets of GSS data.
Select download format. Please note that the 2021 and 2022 Cross-section data are not available in SPSS format:
The 2022 GSS Cross-section contains a new multi-mode design and several other new features. We encourage users review the documents below before they perform any analysis.
You can download the GSS data also from the GSS Data Explorer, the Roper Center and the ICPSR which support other data formats as well. You can obtain a customized subset of cases and/or variables from the GSS Data Explorer and the SDA. Please note that it may take some time before sites other than gss.norc.org are updated with the 2022 cross-section data.
To obtain the geocoded data (e.g. states and counties), please see Obtaining GSS Sensitive Data Files.
Explore GSS questions, variables and publications by subject, year or keyword.
Extract GSS data that can be read into statistical software packages including STATA, SAS, SPSS, and R.
Conduct basic analyses and create data visualizations without the need for statistical software.
Save selected variables, analyses and visualizations to access later or share with colleagues or students.
The 2022 cross-sectional data, along with the cumulative cross-sectional file for the General Social Survey (GSS), is now available in SAS and Stata formats.
GSS partnered with ANES to reinterview participants in the GSS 2016-2020 panel a third time, after the 2020 election. That interview consisted of the ANES post-election questions. The GSS dataset is available as part of the GSS 2016-2020 Panel (release 1a, April 2022). Users can visit electionstudies.org for ANES data.
The 2021 cross-sectional data, along with the cumulative cross-sectional file for the General Social Survey (GSS), is now available in SAS and Stata formats.
Learn more about how we collect GSS data and what you should know about using GSS data in the FAQ section of GSS Data Explorer.
GSS data may be obtained in several ways. Besides accessing GSS data from this site, customized subsets of GSS data may be downloaded online from the Survey Documentation and Analysis website at the University of California, Berkeley. CD-ROMs with GSS data may be ordered from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research using RoperExpress and from the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), if your institution is a member.
If you are interested in acquiring either the GSS panel data from 2006-2014 or any of the General Social Survey-National Death Index linked data sets, those are only available through the GSS website, and can be found on the Get the Data page in either SPSS or Stata formats.
The GSS was first conducted in 1972. Until 1994, it was conducted almost annually (due to funding limitations, there were no GSSs in 1979, 1981, or 1992). Since 1994, the GSS has been conducted in even numbered years.
GSS data are archived about six months after data collection is completed.
