International Social Survey Programme (ISSP)

The International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) is a continuing, annual program of cross-national collaboration. It brings together pre-existing social science projects and coordinates research goals, thereby adding a cross-national perspective to the individual, national studies.

ISSP evolved from a bilateral collaboration between the Allgemeine Bevolkerungsumfrage der Sozialwis-senschaften (ALLBUS) of the Zentrum fur Umfragen, Methoden, und Analysen (ZUMA) in West Germany and the General Social Survey (GSS) of the National Opinion Research Center (NORC), University of Chicago. Both the ALLBUS and the GSS are replicating, time-series studies. The ALLBUS has been conducted biennially since 1980 and the GSS annually since 1972. In 1982 and 1984 the ALLBUS and GSS devoted a segment to a common set of questions.

Meanwhile, in late 1983 the National Centre for Social Research (NCSR; then known as Social and Community Planning Research), London, which was starting a social indicators series called the British Social Attitudes Survey, secured funds to further international collaboration. Representatives from ZUMA, NORC, NCSR, and the Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University, organized ISSP in 1984 and agreed to (a) jointly develop topical modules dealing with important areas of social science, (b) field the modules as a 15-minute supplement to the regular national surveys (or a special survey if necessary), (c) include an extensive common core of background variables, and (d) make the data available to the social-science community as soon as possible.

Each research organization funds all of its own costs. There are no central funds. The merging of the data into a cross-national data set is performed by the Zentralarchiv fur Empirische Sozialforschung, University of Cologne, in collaboration with the Analisis Sociologicos, Economicos y Politicos in Spain.

Since 1984, ISSP has grown to 41 nations, the founding four—Germany, the United States, Great Britain, and Australia—Plus Austria, Ireland, Hungary, the Netherlands, Israel, Norway, the Philippines, New Zealand, Russia, Japan, Bulgaria, Canada, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Poland, Sweden, Spain, Cyprus, France, Portugal, Slovakia, Latvia, Chile, Denmark, South Africa, Switzerland, Venezuela, Brazil, Flanders, Finland, Mexico, Taiwan, Korea, Uruguay, the Dominican Republic, Croatia, and Turkey. In addition, East Germany was added to the German sample upon reunification. Past participants not currently active include Bangladesh and Italy.