Gauging Continuity and Change with the General Social Survey

University Of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia PA

Investigators

Abstract

This project adds questions to the 2020 General Social Survey (GSS) to look at the changing shape of faith-related attitudes and behaviors in America. Over the past thirty years, the landscape of these attitudes and behaviors in America has dramatically changed. While the broad contours of these changes have been captured by public opinion surveys, their causes and consequences often remain underexplored because of the limits of current survey data. The GSS is a publicly available data source, which means that any scholar interested in the study of faith-related attitudes and behaviors and culture can draw on these questions. Through this project, a battery of approximately 40-50 survey questions about faith-related attitudes and behaviors will be included on the 2020 GSS. The GSS is an ideal instrument through which to examine this changing landscape and its connection to broader cultural values for a number of reasons. First, the GSS remains the gold standard in survey research, with an exceptionally high response rate (above 60 percent) and interviews that are conducted face to face on a nationally representative sample of Americans. Second, the GSS already has a wide variety of questions relating to faith and on other social, cultural, and political attitudes. In combination with these already existing questions, our module will allow scholars to tap into different aspects of attachments, beliefs, and attitudes related to faith, and to uncover important variation among Americans. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.