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GSS 5-point scale: 1 = government should do more to solve the country's problems, 5 = it is doing too many things.
Latest: 33% answered “Do more” 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 12 points on average across all answers.
| Line | Question | Match | How answers map |
|---|---|---|---|
| GSS | Whether government should do more or less Now look at CARD BD. Some people think that the government in Washington is trying to do too many things that should be left to individuals and private businesses. Others disagree and think that the government should Do even
more to solve our country's problems. Still others have opinions somewhere in between.
A. Where would you place yourself on this scale, or haven't you made up your mind on this? | identical | Government should do more → Do more; 2 → Do more; Agree with both → Agree with both; 4 → Do less; Government does too much → Do less |
Dashed lines mark changes in how interviews were done, which can shift answers: 1. GSS → web (2021).
Groups differ from everyone by 7 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.