General Social Survey (GSS)

A historical record of the concerns, experiences, attitudes, and practices of residents of the United States.

Both cross-sectional and panel tables with one row per sampled respondent.
A complex sample survey generalizing to non-institutionalized adults (18+) in the United States.
Updated biennially since 1972.
Funded by National Science Foundation, administered by the National Opinion Research Center.

Please skim before you begin:

DOCUMENTATION AND PUBLIC USE FILE CODEBOOK (Release 1)
Wikipedia Entry
This human-composed haiku or a bouquet of artificial intelligence-generated limericks

# chat about who will
# be allowed marriage, children.
# first date questionnaire

Download, Import, Preparation

Download and import the 1972-2022 cumulative data file:

library(haven)

zip_tf <- tempfile()

zip_url <- "https://gss.norc.org/Documents/sas/GSS_sas.zip"
    
download.file( zip_url , zip_tf , mode = 'wb' )

unzipped_files <- unzip( zip_tf , exdir = tempdir() )

gss_tbl <- read_sas( grep( '\\.sas7bdat$' , unzipped_files , value = TRUE ) )

gss_df <- data.frame( gss_tbl )

names( gss_df ) <- tolower( names( gss_df ) )

gss_df[ , 'one' ] <- 1

Save locally

Save the object at any point:

# gss_fn <- file.path( path.expand( "~" ) , "GSS" , "this_file.rds" )
# saveRDS( gss_df , file = gss_fn , compress = FALSE )

Load the same object:

# gss_df <- readRDS( gss_fn )

Survey Design Definition

Construct a complex sample survey design:

library(survey)

options( survey.lonely.psu = "adjust" )

gss_design <- 
    svydesign( 
        ~ vpsu , 
        strata = ~ interaction( year , vstrat ) , 
        data = subset( gss_df , year >= 1975 ) , 
        weights = ~ wtsscomp , 
        nest = TRUE 
    )

Variable Recoding

Add new columns to the data set:

gss_design <- 
    update( 
        gss_design , 

        polviews = 
            factor( polviews , levels = 1:7 ,
                labels = c( "Extremely liberal" , "Liberal" ,
                "Slightly liberal" , "Moderate, middle of the road" ,
                "Slightly conservative" , "Conservative" ,
                "Extremely conservative" )
            ) ,
        
        born_in_usa = as.numeric( born == 1 ) ,
        
        race = factor( race , levels = 1:3 , labels = c( "white" , "black" , "other" ) ) ,
        
        region = 
            factor( region , levels = 1:9 ,
                labels = c( "New England" , "Middle Atlantic" ,
                    "East North Central" , "West North Central" ,
                    "South Atlantic" , "East South Central" ,
                    "West South Central" , "Mountain" , "Pacific" )
            )

    )

Analysis Examples with the `survey` library

Unweighted Counts

Count the unweighted number of records in the survey sample, overall and by groups:

sum( weights( gss_design , "sampling" ) != 0 )

svyby( ~ one , ~ region , gss_design , unwtd.count )

Weighted Counts

Count the weighted size of the generalizable population, overall and by groups:

svytotal( ~ one , gss_design )

svyby( ~ one , ~ region , gss_design , svytotal )

Descriptive Statistics

Calculate the mean (average) of a linear variable, overall and by groups:

svymean( ~ age , gss_design , na.rm = TRUE )

svyby( ~ age , ~ region , gss_design , svymean , na.rm = TRUE )

Calculate the distribution of a categorical variable, overall and by groups:

svymean( ~ race , gss_design , na.rm = TRUE )

svyby( ~ race , ~ region , gss_design , svymean , na.rm = TRUE )

Calculate the sum of a linear variable, overall and by groups:

svytotal( ~ age , gss_design , na.rm = TRUE )

svyby( ~ age , ~ region , gss_design , svytotal , na.rm = TRUE )

Calculate the weighted sum of a categorical variable, overall and by groups:

svytotal( ~ race , gss_design , na.rm = TRUE )

svyby( ~ race , ~ region , gss_design , svytotal , na.rm = TRUE )

Calculate the median (50th percentile) of a linear variable, overall and by groups:

svyquantile( ~ age , gss_design , 0.5 , na.rm = TRUE )

svyby( 
    ~ age , 
    ~ region , 
    gss_design , 
    svyquantile , 
    0.5 ,
    ci = TRUE , na.rm = TRUE
)

Estimate a ratio:

svyratio( 
    numerator = ~ adults , 
    denominator = ~ hompop , 
    gss_design ,
    na.rm = TRUE
)

Subsetting

Restrict the survey design to females:

sub_gss_design <- subset( gss_design , sex == 2 )

Calculate the mean (average) of this subset:

svymean( ~ age , sub_gss_design , na.rm = TRUE )

Measures of Uncertainty

Extract the coefficient, standard error, confidence interval, and coefficient of variation from any descriptive statistics function result, overall and by groups:

this_result <- svymean( ~ age , gss_design , na.rm = TRUE )

coef( this_result )
SE( this_result )
confint( this_result )
cv( this_result )

grouped_result <-
    svyby( 
        ~ age , 
        ~ region , 
        gss_design , 
        svymean ,
        na.rm = TRUE 
    )
    
coef( grouped_result )
SE( grouped_result )
confint( grouped_result )
cv( grouped_result )

Calculate the degrees of freedom of any survey design object:

degf( gss_design )

Calculate the complex sample survey-adjusted variance of any statistic:

svyvar( ~ age , gss_design , na.rm = TRUE )

Include the complex sample design effect in the result for a specific statistic:

# SRS without replacement
svymean( ~ age , gss_design , na.rm = TRUE , deff = TRUE )

# SRS with replacement
svymean( ~ age , gss_design , na.rm = TRUE , deff = "replace" )

Compute confidence intervals for proportions using methods that may be more accurate near 0 and 1. See ?svyciprop for alternatives:

svyciprop( ~ born_in_usa , gss_design ,
    method = "likelihood" , na.rm = TRUE )

Regression Models and Tests of Association

Perform a design-based t-test:

svyttest( age ~ born_in_usa , gss_design )

Perform a chi-squared test of association for survey data:

svychisq( 
    ~ born_in_usa + race , 
    gss_design 
)

Perform a survey-weighted generalized linear model:

glm_result <- 
    svyglm( 
        age ~ born_in_usa + race , 
        gss_design 
    )

summary( glm_result )

Replication Example

Match the unweighted record count on PDF page 10 of the Public Use File codebook:

stopifnot( nrow( subset( gss_design , year == 2022 ) ) == 3544 )

Analysis Examples with `srvyr`

The R srvyr library calculates summary statistics from survey data, such as the mean, total or quantile using dplyr-like syntax. srvyr allows for the use of many verbs, such as summarize, group_by, and mutate, the convenience of pipe-able functions, the tidyverse style of non-standard evaluation and more consistent return types than the survey package. This vignette details the available features. As a starting point for GSS users, this code replicates previously-presented examples:

library(srvyr)
gss_srvyr_design <- as_survey( gss_design )