The Institute for Social Science Research is a center for intellectual activity and basic research in the social sciences. We bring together faculty and students from a wide variety of disciplines, from the basic social science disciplines and the more applied programs in the professional schools alike. Our substantive focus is wide-ranging, as can be seen in this website, such as in our current projects on the politics of race and ethnicity, poverty, immigration, public policy, social change, mass media, bureaucracy, ethnic identity in university life, and the political party system. Our particular strength lies in large-scale, interdisciplinary, quantitative research, but we welcome many smaller projects as well. A central component of this activity is the training of students to carry out such research, especially in the use of survey research and the secondary analysis of archived datasets.

In addition, ISSR maintains two major service centers for research in the social sciences at UCLA. Our Social Science Data Archive makes available social science data that has been collected in studies all over the world, with particular emphasis on census and survey studies. Our Administrative and Fiscal Services personnel manage contracts and grants for UCLA investigators throughout the campus, especially in the social sciences and humanities.

Our central goal is to facilitate research and teaching in the social sciences, and particularly to stimulate innovative work that requires an institutional home beyond the confines of a single program or department. In a changing social and political world, ISSR wants always to be alert to new opportunities, and to support UCLA’s outstanding faculty and students as we push the frontiers of what is known about our social world.

David O. Sears, Director