The online codebook currently contains variable information for data collected in the 1972 through 1998 surveys. The 2000 data has not yet been added.
To find out if your variables of interest were included in the 2000 survey you will have to take the following steps.
Search the existing codebook to find variable names, verbatim question wordings, response categories, and frequency distributions of responses. You can access the online codebook at:
http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/gss There is also a hard copy of the cumulative 1972-2000 codebook in the 5th floor SIPA computer lab.
On the left side of the page is a sidebar with three main headings:
IntroductionCodebook IndexesGSS PublicationsClick on the link under Codebook Indexes that says Subject.
**Note**: If you already know the variable name you may instead click on the link that says
Mnemonic and click directly on the mnemonic for your variables of interest.
Once you are in the Subject screen, a long list of possible subject clusters will appear: You should look around at the different subject categories to get a feel for what types of questions are asked in the General Social Survey.
Once you choose a subject matter, you will see a list of subjects on the left and mnemonics on the right. These subjects correspond to specific questions and each mnemonic is a variable name assigned to a specific question.
Click on the mnemonic that most closely resembles the topic you are trying to examine and you will see the verbatim question wording along with all possible response categories and all respondents answers to the question.
FOR EXAMPLE:
If I want to examine peopleís opinions about whether the government has a special obligation to help people who have suffered prolonged discrimination, I would click on the link that says Affirmative Action which would give me a list of all the variables associated with that subject matter. The subjects listed on the left give me an idea of what the question is asking, but to get the verbatim question wording I would click on the corresponding mnemonic until I found a question that asked about the information I wanted to examine.
The variable HELPBLK asks:
ìSome people think that (Blacks/Negroes/African-Americans) have been discriminated
against for so long that the government has a special obligation to help improve their living standards. Others believe that the government should not be giving special treatment to (Blacks/Negroes/African-Americans). Where would you place yourself on this scale, or haven't you made up your mind on this?î
Response categories range from 1 to 5 where 1 is ìI strongly agree that the government is
obligated to help Blacksî, 3 is ìI agree with both answersî, and 5 is ìI strongly agree that government shouldnít give special treatmentî.
**If a respondent says ìI Donít Knowî (DK) this is coded as an 8 and if they do not
answer it is coded as a 9. This information will be helpful later when you analyze your data.
**You may notice there were 921 cases ìNot Applicableî in 1998, which are distinct
from DK or No Answer. This is important. It indicates that the question HELPBLK was not included in every version (ballot) of the survey that year. Thus, although there were a total of 2832 respondents in the 1998 GSS, 921 of them were not asked the HELPBLK question. This will be important to know when we get to multivariate analyses.
Once you have selected a number of interesting variables (and have obtained the ver batim question wordings and response categories) you will need to go to another site to verify that these variables were, in fact, asked in the 2000 survey. You can go to Columbia Universityís very own Electronic Data Service (EDS) DATAGATE site at:
http://www.columbia.edu/acis/eds/dgate.html
Under the heading ìEasily Accessible Datasetsî click on
Studies in SPSS Portable or SPSS System File format.
A long list will appear in alphabetical order.
Select the link General Social Survey (GSS), Cumulative Data File 1972-2000
Scroll down past the file names and click on
See the Study Description for this Study.
Then select See EDS Online Information
Finally, click on this link:
Other Info: Frequencies on variables in file gss00.por
This will open up a very large document that does not have a ìsearchî function on the page. To learn whether the variable was asked in 2000, you must use the browserís ìFindî function. For example, in Netscape under the ìEditî menus, the ìFind (on this page)î option allows you to search through the text. From this ìFindî dialog enter the name of the variable (e.g., HELPBLK). If it finds the variable, it is in the 2000 GSS and indicates its coding and frequencies. You will note that the verbatim question wordings are not included.