In the late 1980s, national Jewish federation leaders recognized the need for accurate survey data on American Jews and sponsored the National Jewish Population Survey (NJPS) 1990. That landmark study provided the first truly reliable information about American Jewry. Its findings galvanized the community, leading decision-makers and organizations to use the data for planning and policy making and to redefine the communal agenda.

Meeting the need for new information a decade later, United Jewish Communities (UJC) has sponsored NJPS 2000-01. Just as its predecessor survey, NJPS 2000-2001 will be used by every major constituent organization in the American Jewish community to set priorities and to determine where to focus resources and energies.

The purpose of NJPS 2000-2001 is to provide a comprehensive social and demographic portrait of the American Jewish population. NJPS 2000-01 is intended to become a valuable source of data on the Jewish community during the first decade of the 21st century, providing crucial information to UJC, Jewish federations, synagogues and other major participants in the Jewish community. It will be used for communal planning, policy making, financial resource development, Jewish education, scholarly research and many other purposes.

The NJPS 2000-01 questionnaire was prepared as a cooperative effort with input from a large number and wide range of participants in the Jewish community. The process was extremely open resulting in suggestions for improvement from many different constituents to ensure that they will have the necessary information to pursue their policy and planning objectives in the coming decade.

During the beginning stages of the process, a draft questionnaire was widely circulated for review to all federations, other major Jewish organizations, scholars of contemporary Jewry and other communal stakeholders, reaching over 1000 individuals and organizations. Many meetings were held with the Leadership of UJC's Pillars and representatives of virtually all segments of the community for input. The draft underwent numerous revisions and was pre-tested with households representing different denominations, structures and geographic locations.

Among the multitude of topics that NJPS 2000-01 explores are: size, geographic distribution and socio-economic characteristics of the Jewish population, family structure, fertility and marital history, intermarriage, Jewish identification, religious practices, Jewish education, synagogue affiliation, philanthropic behavior, social service needs, and relationship to Israel.

NJPS 2000-01 is a custom survey with a representative cross-section of the adult Jewish population. It was administered between August 2000 and August 2001 by telephone using random digit dialing techniques with a sample of 4,500 Jewish adults, age 18 and older, residing in the 50 United States. In addition, approximately 650 People of Jewish Background (PJBs) were interviewed using a shortened version of NJPS, and 4,000 non-Jews were interviewed in the National Survey of Religion and Ethnicity (NSRE). The purpose of NSRE is both methodological, for weighting and estimating the Jewish population sizes, and theoretical, for understanding the social well being of the Jewish population compared to the general population of the US.

NJPS 2000-01 used a stratified sample, with areas of higher incidence of Jewish settlement sampled at a higher rate than lower incidence areas. All screened households were weighted to represent household distribution within each stratum and to adjust for disproportionate sampling rates among strata using 2000 Census data. Each household has a known non-zero probability of selection that ensures rigorous population projectability.

In NJPS 2000-01 the selection of respondents is a priori. Respondents were classified as Jews, People of Jewish Background (PJBs), or non-Jews in the screening process. Four questions were utilized to screen respondents:

1. What is your religion, if any?
2. Do you have a Jewish mother or a Jewish father?
3. Were you raised Jewish?
4. Do you consider yourself Jewish for any reason?

These questions tap into religious identification, parentage, socialization, and social-psychological identification. Specific decision rules regarding respondent selection were built into the screener design. In addition, in households where the respondent interviewed was not the person who completed the screener due to random selection of a respondent within a household, the four screening questions were repeated to verify the Jewish identification of the respondent. Qualified respondents were immediately interviewed after completing the screener, availability permitting. The questionnaire was designed to collect extensive information about the respondent and one randomly selected child. In addition, detailed information for some variables was collected about spouse/partner and basic demographic information was collected for all adults and children in the household.

The sample was controlled by dividing it into approximately 20 replicates, each representative of the national Jewish population. Other quality controls used were callbacks to obtain disposition for telephone number; callbacks to reach selected respondent in qualified household; varying day of week / time of day of callbacks; no Sabbath or holiday interviewing; scripted refusal speeches; Russian and Yiddish interviewing, if necessary; $25 incentive for participation; and pledge of charitable contribution by the sponsoring organization.

The NJPS electronic data files and full study documentation are available through the North American Jewish Data Bank, a joint project of United Jewish Communities and the University of Connecticut, through the university's Center for Judaic Studies and Contemporary Jewish Life and the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research. For further information on obtaining the data files and documentation, visit the Data Bank Web site, www.jewishdatabank.org, or e-mail the Data Bank at info@jewishdatabank.org.