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 ...