SISS: Public Opinion on Social Issues, 1975-2017 (Ed Nelson; Updated Dec. 2019)

Description

Public Opinion on Social Issues, 1975-2017 by Edward Nelson, Professor Emeritus, Department of Sociology, California State University, Fresno.

The SISS module was designed to introduce students to bivariate and multivariate analysis using survey data. The focus is on two and three variable crosstabulations. Chi square and measures of association are introduced and may or may not be used as the instructor wishes. The codebook includes some variables in both recoded and unrecoded form (age, education) so the instructor may teach recoding or not teach it. Variables have been created and added to the data set for religiosity and tolerance. There are two data sets--one that includes only the 2018 file and the other that include data from seven time periods (1975, 1982, 1989, 1996, 2003 (2002 and 2004 files were combined to represent 2003), 2010, and 2017 (2016 and 2018 files were combined to represent 2017).   All data are from the General Social Survey. Instructors can choose to focus on a detailed analysis of a single year or on change over time. The focus of the module is on developing and testing hypotheses.

Text file - download and save in MS Word format.

Data Files. Note: Both .sav and .por files can be read or created with PSPP as well as SPSS.

  • 2018 only
  • data by year - download and save in SPSS .por format, then open in SPSS or PSPP.
    • Opening the data files in SPSS
      • Right click on the file name and save it to your hard drive.
      • Open SPSS.
      • Click on "File" and then on "Open" and finally on "Data" in the menu and browse to where it is stored on your computer.
      • By default SPSS will assume that it is a .sav file. Since these files are .por files, you will have to change the file type to .por. Now you should be able to open the file on your computer.
      • Save the file as a .sav file. Once you do this, you will be able to open the .sav file by double clicking on it, assuming you have set up the proper associations so your computer knows that a .sav file is an SPSS file.
    • Opening the data files in PSPP.
      • Open PSPP.
      • Click on "File" and then on "Open" in the menu and browse to where it is stored on your computer.
      • Double click on the file name and it should open the file in PSPP.

Citation: Nelson, Edward. 2019. Public Opinion on Social Issues, 1975-2017. Unpublished Manuscript.


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