
When someone goes public with a simple, straightforward, good idea, the audience usually scratches its collective head and wonders why no one thought of it before. That was my reaction as I read James A. Davis and Tom W. Smith′s short volume on the General Social Survey...

The answers to questions on a wide variety of social and political issues from more than 25,000 respondents are contained in the General Social Survey (GSS) data base. The authors, who have directed the GSS since its inception, have set out to enable social scientists to exploit...