GSS Data set

A Note About Using SPSS

To carry out the SPSS exercises at the end of each chapter and in Appendix D (on the book’s study
site), you must already have SPSS on your computer. The exercises use a subset of the 2016 GSS data
set (included on the study site). This data set includes variables on topics such as work, family, gender
roles, government institutions, race relations, and politics. Appendix D will get you up and running
with IBM SPSS, and you can then spend as much time as you like exploring characteristics and
attitudes of Americans. If you are able to use the complete version of SPSS (perhaps in a university
computer lab), just download the GSS2016 file and save it on your computer, then start SPSS on your
PC, open the GSS2016 file, and begin with the first SPSS exercise in Chapter 1. The GSS2016x file
provides all the variables you need for exercises in each chapter except Chapter 9, while the GSS2016y
file includes just the variables needed for the examples and exercises in Chapter 9. If you are using
the SPSS Student version of SPSS (purchased with this text or separately), you must download the
GSS2016x_reduced and GSS2016y_reduced files and use them, as requested, for the SPSS exercises.
Alternatively, you could complete many of the SPSS exercises in the text using an online analysis program at the University of California, Berkeley, website (http://sda.berkeley.edu/archive.htm) or at the National Opinion Research Center site (www.norc.uchicago.edu/GSS+Website/). See the book’s study site for instructions about this easy approach to statistical analysis.

You will also find below for downloading a subset of the 2002 International Social Survey Program data set. In addition, the websites listed subsequently contain documentation for the GSS and the ISSP2002, as well as the complete GSS2016 data set (but this original dataset does not include constructed variables that are used in some of the exercises).

Tutorials

› Correlation and regression analysis

› Crosstabulation

› Displaying and summarizing data

› Elaboration with crosstabs

› Statistical inference

GSS Data Sets

› GSS2016

› GSS2016x

› GSS2016x_reduced

› GSS2016y

› GSS2016y_reduced