ISSP 
    International Social Survey Program 

The International Social Survey Program is a program of international cooperation which is yearly repeated. The aim is to coordinate the pre-existing research projects in social science carried out to national level. In particular, the attempt is to render this studies homogenous to create cross-national databases comparable among them.

The ISSP is founded in 1984 as a program of cooperation between Germany, USA, UK and Australia (the promoter centres were: l'Allgemeinen Bevolkerungsumfragen der Socialwissenschaften (ALLBUS) of the Zentrum für Umfragen, Methoden, und Analysen (ZUMA) of Mannheim in Germany; the General Social Survey (GSS) of the National Opinion Research Center (NORC), in the University of Chicago; the Social and Community Planning Research (SCPR) of London and the Research School of Social Sciences of Australian National University). Subsequently, the program has been extended to other 27 nations, and the actual country are: Australia, Austria, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Flanders, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Philippine, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Uruguay, USA, Venezuela.
Every year a group of experts from member country defines the most important theme for the survey. The program don’t have financings from a common institution, but each centre of national research work in autonomy.

The common database is constructed by Zentralarchiv für Empirische Sozialforschung, of University of Colony in collaboration with Analisis Sociologicos, Economicos y Politicos in Spain.

The Zentralarchiv für Empirische Sozialforschung, of University of Colony (web site: http://www.gesis.org/en/index.htm) is the official archive which collects and distributes the ISSP survey data, and it conserved all documentation. The ISSP surveys are available also in some national archive as ICPSR in Michigan (web site: http://www.icpsr.umich.edu) or ADPSS-Sociodata in Italy.

In the site of Colony Archive on the web page http://www.gesis.org/en/data_service/issp/index.htm is possible download directly the questionnaire, the codebooks and the variable index of all ISSP surveys (except the latest which don’t are yet available). Instead, the data is available for sale and they can asked to the respective national archive. In Italy are distributed by ADPSS-Sociodata.