Ed Collom, Cal State Fullerton professor of sociology, was named a winner of the 2026 General Social Survey Module Competition and will add questions to the General Social Survey, which is the single best source for sociological and attitudinal trend data covering the United States.
The General Social Survey is a nationally representative survey of adults in the United States that has been conducted since 1972, and it is among the most widely used by social scientists. The 2026 survey will be fielded from April through November this year.
The survey questions are a repeat of items fielded in 2002, evaluating the number of people respondents have been in contact with over the past year and the number of those people with whom they feel really close to.
“Social networks are at the core of human societies and are key to sociologists attempting to understand them. We shape our networks by exercising our agency. At the same time, we are affected by our networks as larger social forces acting upon us,” said Collom.
The survey results from these two questions will produce counts of respondents’ weak ties and their strong ties. The ability to compare these values from 2002 to 2026 will be of great sociological interest, according to Collom.
“Granovetter’s study on ‘The Strength of Weak Ties’ remains the most widely cited journal article in sociology and the McPherson et al. study on ‘Social Isolation in America’ gained national attention and caused much debate,” said Collom.
Collom is also excited that future Cal State Fullerton students will learn to analyze this forthcoming data in his Statistics for the Social Sciences course.
“I’ve been teaching for over 20 years now and my current section of sociology statistics is my 53rd time teaching it,” said Collom.
Collom is the author of “Quantitative Sociology Essentials,” an Open Educational Resource text that he uses in the course. He plans on updating it with the new 2026 General Social Survey data next year once it is released.