The stereotype may be that women are the ones who want children, but a new study suggests that US women are more open to remaining childless than men are. Using data from two national surveys (National Survey of Families and Households and General Social Survey), researchers at the University of Florida in Gainesville found that women had more positive views of childlessness than men did. (Reuters Health)

Citation: Tanya Koropeckyj-Cox & Gretchen Pendell (2007). The gender gap in attitudes about childlessness in the United States. Journal of Marriage and Family 69(4): 899–915. (Available online to the Penn State community)

ICPSR has released the 1972-2006 Cumulative GSS file. Penn State researchers can now access the data on SodaPop or PopNet.

The new version (4/21/06) of the GSS 1972-2004 Cumulative file (data and documentation) has been added to the PRI GSS SodaPop Collection.

The General Social Surveys 1972-2004 Cumulative File and associated documentation have been redownloaded from ICPSR due to a re-release of the files.

Information regarding re-release:
The update contains a searchable version of the codebook provided by the data supplier. The update also contains an updated version of the data itself. In addition, the study now includes SAS and Stata setup files along with SAS transport (XPORT) and Stata system files.

The PRI Data Archive has acquired the following files:
Codebook, Codebook Appendix, and Errata Notice (*.PDF format)
ASCII data file (*.txt.gz)
SAS Transport data file (*.xpt)
SAS Input (*.sas)

Files are currently available on PopNet UNIX, and will be made available via SodaPop as soon as it is possible (this version will replace the existing version).

Users may also opt to download the GSS directly from ICPSR.

The GSS 1972-2004 Full Release has now been added to the SodaPop GSS Collection. Files for this collection also reside on PopNet UNIX as previously announced.

The General Social Survey (GSS) 1972-2004 Cumulative survey has been added to PopNet UNIX. Data (ASCII, SPSS Portable), input (SPSS), and documentation (PDF) are available. Please note that there is an errata associated with the codebook (PDF). The files will be added to SodaPop as soon as it is possible.

Please note that this release supercedes the preliminary release.

A CD-ROM copy of the Preliminary Release of the General Social Survey (GSS) 1972-2004 has been provided to PRI by the Penn State University Librarires. The data (ASCII and SPSS Portable File), SPSS Input, and weighting documentation have been added to POPNET. Please note that a codebook is not available with the preliminary release. The CD-ROM will be cataloged and available for check-out from 806 Oswald in the near future. PRI will be obtaining the full release from the University Libraries when it becomes available. Preliminary data initially released 6/2005.

GSS 1972-2004 Prelim. Release location - /home/data/gss/1972-2004