Well, let me just go back. I can comment about the GSS, because actually I was the father of it. I initiated it when I became chief statistician because I found that generally our social statistics were woefully underdeveloped, and in a way the general social survey was really a poor person's answer to the paucity of social information generally. Instead of devoting the survey to any single topic--whether it's education, or family, or health, or immigration, or whatever social issue--we decided to try to include a rotating program. Once every five years we would come back to the same topics.
That was the first decision: to try to spread it as widely as possible.
Second, we could afford only a relatively small sample size. We were hoping that the interest generated by the GSS data would result in more sponsors coming forward, putting their money on the table, and saying, “We want this information; can you do A, B, and C?” To some extent that worked, but not nearly sufficiently.
The GSS was really as much a teaser as it was an attempt to answer every question. At the same time, it has answered a lot of questions, and it has resulted in extremely interesting and useful analysis, but a survey is typically an inter-censual indicator; most of the time the census provides the detailed picture once every five years. They are complementary in their roles, and that complementary aspect works very well between the GSS and the long form.