Research Methods in Political Science

The General Social Survey (GSS) is a project of NORC at the University of Chicago, with principal funding from the National Science Foundation. Since 1972, the GSS has been monitoring societal change and studying the growing complexity of American society. The GSS is a publicly available national resource, and is one of the most frequently analyzed sources of information in the social sciences. GSS Data Explorer is one of many ways that NORC supports the dissemination of GSS data for use by legislators, policymakers, researchers, educators and others.

​​​Since 1972, the General Social Survey (GSS) has provided politicians, policymakers, and scholars with a clear and unbiased perspective on what Americans think and feel about such issues as national spendi​ng priorities, crime and punishment, intergroup relations, and confidence in institutions.

Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. We conduct public opinion polling, demographic research, content analysis and other data-driven social science research. We do not take policy positions.

Presidential job approval is a simple, yet powerful, measure of the public's view of the U.S. president's job performance at a particular point in time.

The approval ratings reported here are based on periodic multiday Gallup polls for Presidents Harry Truman through George W. Bush; weekly Gallup Daily tracking averages for President Barack Obama; weekly Gallup Daily tracking averages for President Donald Trump in 2017 and 2018; and periodic multiday Gallup polls for Trump starting in 2019.

An independent, nonpartisan resource
on trends in American public opinion.

The American National Election Survey (ANES) serves the research needs of social scientists, teachers, students, policymakers, and journalists by producing data from its own surveys on voting, public opinion, and political participation.