California State University San Marcos The General Social Survey Questions

I’m working on a sociology multi-part question and need the explanation and answer to help me learn.

The General Social Survey

We will be using the General Social Survey (GSS) for our final paper in this class. So this week I want you to just practice getting into the website and poking around. Below is the link to the website (bookmark it so you can get back to it quickly). The questions below are questions you will see again in the discussion forum (in other words, do the activity and think about the questions and answers below, but you will find the link to post them in the discussion link and below this page in the same section).

Locate the homepage for the General Social Survey at: http://gss.norc.org

In the upper left corner of the homepage, select “About the GSS.” Read “An Introduction to the General Social Survey” section.

Answer the following questions:

1. Does the GSS meet criteria for being “social science”? Explain.

What is/are the motivations for conducting the GSS? Explain.

Based only on this reading, is the GSS intended for descriptive, exploratory, explanatory, or evaluation research (or some combination of the four)? Explain.

Is the GSS quantitative or qualitative in orientation (you may need to browse more of the site to fully answer this question)? Explain.