The General Social Survey (GSS) is a means for the collection of data on demographic characteristics and attitudes of residents of the United States. The survey is conducted by telephone by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, and was conducted every year from 1972 to 1994 (except in 1979, 1981, and 1992). Since 1994, it has been conducted every other year. The survey reportedly takes 30-45 minutes to administer. The University of Chicago is a private co-educational university located in Chicago, Illinois. ... 1972 was a leap year that started on a Saturday. ... 1994 was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International year of the Family. ... 1979 is a common year starting on Monday. ... 1981 is a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... 1992 is a leap year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... 1994 was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International year of the Family. ...

The data collected about this survey includes both demographic information and respondant's opinions on matters ranging from government spending to the state of race relations to the existence and nature of God. Because of the wide range of topics covered, and the comprehensive gathering of demographic information, survey results allow social scientists to correlate demographic factors like age, race, gender, and urban/rural upbringing with beliefs, and thereby determine whether, for example, an average middle-aged black male respondent would be more or less likely to move to a different U.S. state for economic reasons than a similarly situated white female respondent; or whether a highly educated person with a rural upbringing is more likely to believe in a transcendant God than a person with an urban upbringing and only a high-school education. A race is a distinct population of humans distinguished in some way from other humans. ... The term God is used to designate a Supreme Being; however, there are countless definitions of God. ... A U.S. state is any one of the 50 states (four of which officially favor the term commonwealth) which, together with the District of Columbia, form the United States of America. ...

GSS results are freely made available to interested parties over the internet, and are widely used in sociological research. The data is generally available in Microsoft Excel files and also in a format designed for a statistical number-crunching program called SPSS. Sociology is the study of the social lives of humans, groups and societies. ... Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet program written and distributed by Microsoft for computers using the Microsoft Windows operating system and for Apple Macintosh computers. ... The computer program SPSS (originally, Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) was released in its first version in the 1960s, and is among the most widely used programs for statistical analysis in social science. ...

From the GSSDIRS Introduction (http://webapp.icpsr.umich.edu/GSS/about/gss/about.htm):

"The GSS (General Social Survey) is an almost annual, 'omnibus,' personal interview survey of U.S. households conducted by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) with James A. Davis, Tom W. Smith, and Peter V. Marsden as principal investigators (PIs). The first survey took place in 1972 and since then more than 38,000 respondents have answered over 3,260 different questions."

GSSDIRS (http://webapp.icpsr.umich.edu/GSS/) provides a website that allows users to search GSS information, test hypotheses, and look for interesting correlations.