The best way to begin is to come up with a search strategy. What kind of information are you looking for? Are you just beginning your research and want to find very general information? Are you looking for more granular information? Do you already have something very specific in mind that you want to find?
The Basic Search covers Publications on this website. These consist of about 9,000 bibliographic entries and several hundred GSS Reports. For about half of the bibliographic entries only standard reference information (e.g. author, title, date of publication) has been entered. For the other half of the bibliographic entries, the standard reference information has been augmented with additional information, most frequently with an abstract and a list of GSS variables used in the research. For the GSS Reports the full text is available. Thus, what the search covers varies greatly depending on the nature of the entries from the minimum of only standard reference information to the full-text of reports.
Users should be aware that GSS mnemonics can be searched on, but that only the GSS Reports and about half of the bibliographic entries contain this information.