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Whether sex before marriage is always wrong, almost always wrong, wrong only sometimes, or not wrong at all (GSS).
Latest: 18% answered “Almost always or sometimes wrong” in GSS, 2024.
Dashed lines mark changes in how interviews were done, which can shift answers: 1. GSS → web (2021).
Shares of people whose answer maps onto these categories (non-answers and answers outside the scale are left out), because surveys differ in whether they offer “don’t know.” Each column is one survey wave, evenly spaced rather than to scale in time; hover for exact shares.
Dashed lines mark changes in how interviews were done, which can shift answers: 1. GSS → web (2021).
Shares of people whose answer maps onto these categories (non-answers and answers outside the scale are left out), because surveys differ in whether they offer “don’t know.” Each point is one survey wave at the middle of its field period. Lines from different surveys are never spliced together.
Groups differ from everyone by 11 points on average across all answers.
| Line | Question | Match | How answers map |
|---|---|---|---|
| GSS | Whether sex before marriage is wrong There's been a lot of discussion about the way morals and attitudes about sex are changing in this country. If a man and woman have sex relations before marriage, do you think it is always wrong, almost always wrong, wrong only
sometimes, or not wrong at all? | identical | Always wrong → Always wrong; Almost always wrong → Almost always or sometimes wrong; Wrong only sometimes → Almost always or sometimes wrong; Not wrong at all → Not wrong at all |
Dashed lines mark changes in how interviews were done, which can shift answers: 1. GSS → web (2021).
Groups differ from everyone by 10 points on average across all answers.
Dashed lines mark changes in how interviews were done, which can shift answers: 1. GSS → web (2021).
Subgroup charts are picked automatically. Of every breakdown in the data (party, ideology, age, sex, race, education, income, region, religion, and community type), these two put their groups furthest from everyone’s answers: the gap is averaged across all answer categories and waves, with each group weighted by its share of respondents. Party and ideology count as one choice, so the second chart shows a different kind of split. Groups with an effective sample under 50 in a wave are left out of that wave.