Tug Of War
UJC names team to investigate population study amid debate over decision to pull survey.
JOE BERKOFSKY
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
New York City
he head of the United Jewish
Communities appointed a committee
this week to investigate what went wrong
with the National Jewish Population
Survey (NJPS).
The appointments came as Stephen Hoffman,
president and CEO of the UJC, which funded the
$6 million study, traded barbs with top advisers to
the much-heralded survey over his decision 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 he
made after learning last week that the out-
side research firm conducting the 2000-01
study lost some data.
Hoffman said he had lost faith in
the committee's top two advisers and
that the study was too important to
risk going forward at this.time. 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.
"The issue is not that there's something cat-
astrophic — there's no smoking gun here,"
Hoffman said. "The issue is an accumulation
of questions concerning NJPS."
Hoffman's decision to delay the NJPS came
on the eve of the General Assembly, where many
in the organized Jewish community were
expecting to learn the latest data from the sur-
vey about Jewish identity issues such as affilia-
tion and intermarriage.
"The integrity of the National Jewish Population
Study is of the utmost importance," Hoffman said
Monday as he appointed a task force to investigate
the matter. 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 of Detroit and
Edward Kaplan, co-chairs of the NJPS trustees, to
the investigative body.
The news that the study was not being released
stunned the organized Jewish world. Some advisers
to the study criticized the delay for generating con-
troversy and overshadowing what was essentially an
accurate survey.
"We think it was a mistake not to release the data,"
said Frank Mott, co-chair of the advisory committee
and professor at Ohio State University. "A molehill
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2002
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has been turned into a mountain." Mott, along with
co-chair Vivian Klaff, a professor at the University of
Delaware, unsuccessfully lobbied Hoffman to go for-
ward with the study last week. Despite the fact that
"we have a very good data set," Mott said, "to some
extent it's now being trashed. Mr. Hoffman reacted
very hastily. He is, I think, misinformed."
But Hoffman was critical of the leading advisers on
the study, saying last week's revelations were only the
latest in a series of problems. He said he was con-
cerned that the revelations of missing data only
reached him last week despite the fact that at least one
NJPS researcher knew of the glitch for some time. "I
have lost total confidence in the leadership of NTAC,"
Hoffman said, referring to the advisory panel.
The missing data was the "straw that broke my
camel's back" regarding the advisory panel
leadership, he said. For some time,
Hoffman said, he had built an
"accumulation of doubt" about the panel's leader-
ship, though he declined to say why. Still, Hoffman
said he had no plans to dismiss any members of the
volunteer advisory panel, and none of the critics on
the panel had plans to step down.
Awaiting Data
Anticipation of the new data on intermarriage and
affiliation has built since the last study in 1990 pro-
duced the controversial finding that 52 percent of
Jews married non-Jews in the previous five years.
That finding largely split the community into
those who urged outreach to marginal Jews and
those who advocated strengthening Jewish identity
among those already affiliated.
This time around, the NJPS team set out a
timetable to release the survey results. UJC released
initial population figures last month. According to
the latest study, the U.S. Jewish population has fall-
en to 5.2 million, down 300,000 from 1990, as the
median age climbed and women waited longer to
have fewer children.
Hoffman last week said that, had he known of the
missing data before releasing the initial population
information in October, "we would not have
released it."
But several members of the advisory panel said the
missing data was relatively minor. It concerned
codes that telephone callers from the firm Roper
Audits & Surveys Worldwide were supposed to keep
when screening households for Jews, advisory com-
mittee members said. The 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, com-
mittee members said.
David Marker, a member of the adviso-
ry committee and senior statistician at the
firm Westat, said 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.
The missing information could
also have resulted in a 5 percent over-
estimate of some 40,000 people "loosely
associated" with Jews, Marker added,
while the number of non-Jews living with
Jews may have been overestimated by 1 per-
cent. "On a statistical basis, it's not enough"
to withhold the survey, Marker said.
Klaff said that most of her committee col-
leagues were "very disappointed" in the deci-
sion to delay the study. Ira Sheskin, an advisory
committee member and director of the Jewish
Demography Project at the University of Miami's
Miller Center for Contemporary Jewish Studies, is
among the minority of advisers who supported
Hoffman's decision to delay the study until "we're
100 percent certain it's OK."
Still, Sheskin said the missing data was not a big
problem and he was not aware of any other major
problems with the NJPS. "As far as I know, there are
not skeletons in the closet," he said.
But Hoffman dismissed the argument. Klaff and
Mott. "have had an excuse that says, 'it's not signifi-
cant' on a number of occasions," Hoffman said, and
they "keep explaining away things."
"One percent here, 1 percent there — pretty soon
it's significant," he said. Still, Hoffman expressed con-
fidence in the ultimate outcome of the study. "I have
fundamental confidence in the core data," he said.
Shapiro, who is heading the investigation, said the
task force will convene "in the coming weeks" and
"examine the full range of issues concerning NJPS."
One path the task force will follow will be uncover-
ing who knew of the missing information and at
what point.
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