What You Can—and Can’t—Do With Three-Wave Panel Data

The recent change in the general social survey (GSS) to a rotating panel design is a landmark development for social scientists. Sociological methodologists have argued that fixed-effects (FE) models are generally the best starting point for analyzing panel data because they allow analysts to control for unobserved time-constant heterogeneity. We review these treatments and demonstrate the advantages of FE models in the context of the GSS. We...