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November 22, 2002/Kislev 17 5763, Vol. 55, No. 13
Team to investigate delayed survey
JOE BERKOFSKY
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
NEW YORK - The head of the United Jewish Communities appointed a committee this week to investigate what went wrong with the National Jewish Population Survey.
The appointments came as Stephen Hoffman, president and CEO of the UJC, which funded the $6 million study, decided to delay making key parts of the study public.
Members of the National Technical Advisory Committee are criticizing Hoffman for pulling its release from the organization's General Assembly in Philadelphia this week.
Hoffman is standing by the decision after learning that the outside research firm conducting the 2000-01 study lost some data.
He said the lost data raised concerns that could damage the credibility of what was being billed as the most extensive portrait of American Jewry to date.
Hoffman's decision to delay the NJPS came on the eve of the General Assembly, where many in the organized Jewish community were hoping to learn the latest data from the survey about Jewish identity issues such as affiliation and intermarriage.
Hoffman named McGill University's principal and vice chancellor, Bernard Shapiro, to head the UJC task force.
Hoffman also appointed Howard Rieger, president of the United Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh, and Mandell Berman and Edward Kaplan, co-chairmen of the NJPS trustees, to the investigative body.
The news that the study was not being released as expected this week stunned the organized Jewish world.
Some advisers to the study criticized the delay for generating controversy and overshadowing what was essentially an accurate survey.
The lost data concerned codes that telephone callers from the firm Roper Audits & Surveys Worldwide were supposed to keep when screening households for Jews, advisory committee members said.
These callers failed to keep, or later lost, codes for two-thirds of the first 14 sets of 22 surveys the overall study was based upon, committee members said.
David Marker, a member of the advisory committee, said that at worst, the glitch caused the study to underestimate the population by 1 percent - well within a typical margin of error for such a large survey sample of 4,500.
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