Folks who use General Social Survey (GSS) data should know that, except for the first year of the survey--1972--the sample has always been lopsided toward women. GSS workers knock on doors during the daytime hours and are more likely to find women to interview.
The percent of the sample that is female is typically in the mid-to-high 50s; men are typically in the low-to-mid forties. NORC has evidently made no effort in almost 40 years to get a balanced sample.
Analysts should take this into account, especially when they generate national estimates that differ significantly by gender. For example, if you are estimating the percent of adult Americans who favor the death penalty, your figure will be low since men disproportionately support it but are underrepresented in the sample. On many political attitudes, the country is a bit more conservative than the GSS indicates.
Are gun owners mentally ill?
Some anti-gun people think owning a gun is a sign of some kind of mental abnormality. According to General Social Survey data, gun owners ...
-
In the comments in the last post , some readers contended that Jews are not ethnocentric. Using the same question I used in the comments se... -
Via a reader at iSteve, it looks like this might be the vocabulary test used by the General Social Survey. (Someone please tell me if I'...
-
I've been distributing a questionnaire to students which, among other things, asks them their religion. Quite a few have answered "...