A Proposal to Continue 'A National Data Program for the Social Sciences'

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SES-0824618Tom SmithMichael HoutPeter MarsdenThis project continues the National Data Program for the Social Sciences (NDPSS), more specifically the General Social Survey (GSS) and the United States component of the International Social Survey Program (ISSP) The NDPSS is a social indicators, infrastructure, and data dissemination program. Its gather data that allows us to (1) monitor and explain trends, changes and constants in attitudes, behaviors, and attributes and examine the structure and functioning of society in general as well as the role of various sub-groups; (2) compare the United States to other societies, by developing cross-national models of human society; and (3) make high quality data easily accessible to scholars, students, and others with minimal cost and waiting. The GSS is a regular, ongoing interview survey of U.S households. The mission of the GSS is to make timely high-quality scientifically relevant data available to social science researchers. Since 1972 the GSS (with NSF support) has conducted 26 in-person, cross-sectional surveys of the adult household population of the U S with approximately 51,000 respondents. GSS content is wide ranging with approximately 5084 variables overall. The GSS has spurred cross-national research by inspiring other nations to develop data collection programs modeled on the GSS and by joining with the International Social Science Program (ISS). Since 1984 ISSP has grown to 43 nations. The GSSDIRS website is extremely popular with users, having over 4,000,000 visits annually The ISSP website is visited over 200,000 a year. The user community includes researchers, college teachers, university students, business planners, media and public officials. Sociologists, political scientists, economists, statisticians, survey methodologists, anthropologists, geographers, biologists, engineers, psychologists, criminologist, legal scholars, medical/health researchers and business administration and management scholars use GSS data. This use of the GSS is widely documented in publications. This renewal includes several enhancements, upgrades and innovations to the GSS. Specifically, it will 1) add contextual data to supplement individual-level information to place the individual in a social context; (2) expand our coverage of America's ethnic and cultural diversity by the development of Spanish versions of GSS instruments and conducting interviews in Spanish: (3) fully implement a panel deign to study change among individuals and (4) facilitate the collection of auxiliary data on other social units besides individuals and households and to advance multi-level, multi-contextual analyses.Broader Impacts The NDPSS has already had enormous impact beyond the boundaries of the survey itself. The GSS is held as the gold standard by which many other survey data collection activities are measured, and the ISSP program has led to innovations and developments in cross-cultural and cross-national research. The GSS thus serves as a model that is being emulated elsewhere, such as in the recently created European Social Survey program. This renewal project will pioneer the development of a state-of-the-art Interview-to-Internet archiving and dissemination system that will speed access to the computer-assisted interview data and allow users to access all information associated with each variable in a database via extensive hypertext links. The contributions of the GSS to the teaching of quantitative social science analysis are unprecedented. Its accessibility and ease of use has added value far beyond the original data collection efforts, and researchers in the social sciences continue to mine the data both old and new to advance knowledge and test theories. The GSS and ISSP program is part of the core infrastructure of social science research in the U.S.