The American Jewish population was the topic of discussion at "By the Numbers," the inaugural Steinhardt Social Research Institute conference which took place Thursday in Rapaporte Treasure Hall. Steinhardt was founded this year through a donation from Michael Steinhardt, chairman of the Jewish Life Network/Steinhardt Foundation. According to its Web site, the institute works closely with the Cohen Center for Modern Judaic Studies on campus to collect and analyze data focused on the Jewish population as well as general ethnic and religious issues in the United States.

Prof. Sylvia Fishman (NEJS) introduced the conference by expressing concern over the dwindling numbers of Jews in America.

"People who answer 'yes' when asked a question like 'Are you Jewish by religion?' has decreased over the last decade," Fishman said. She noted that statistics like these show why it is important to analyze the state of the American Jewish community.

Presenters throughout the day asked what could be done to obtain accurate data.

Steinhardt senior research associate Elizabeth Tighe gave the next lecture along with Leonard Saxe, director of both the Steinhardt Institute and the Cohen Center for Modern Judaic Studies. Saxe and Tighe outlined the marginally successful history of attempts to estimate the Jewish population.

There are approximately 5.9 million Jews currently living in the United States, according to American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise Web site.

Saxe emphasized the difficulties encountered in efforts to calculate the number of Jews, which he said date back to biblical times when a census was discussed in the B'midbar book of the Torah.

Saxe also noted that in recent years, some creative tactics have been used to try to find Jews in the general population. Such efforts include counting the number of absences in elementary schools on Yom Kippur, a day when most Jews would be attending synagogue.

Tighe proposed conducting a meta-analysis-a research method that combines and analyzes data from past studies.

"We have to understand the variability between surveys," she said. "What is it that's consistent and what [do] we see over and over again?"

Prof. Charles Kadushin (SOC) and Steinhardt Research Associate Benjamin Phillips started the afternoon session. They discussed the 2005 Greater Boston Jewish Community Study-a telephone survey of the Boston Jewish population conducted every 10 years-and ways in which the strategies used in Boston could be applied to studies of larger Jewish populations in other cities.

A four-person panel responded to this presentation.

Mark Schulman, president of Schulman, Ronca and Bucuvalas, Inc., raised concerns that social scientists place too much emphasis on the quantity of survey respondents, neglecting to focus on the accuracy of the answers they do receive. He said that the long length even of pre-survey screening questions deters potential participants from providing complete and thorough responses.

"After five minutes of questioning, I wonder who it is that sticks with us," Schulman said, noting that people with certain types of views may be predisposed to follow through, while others are inclined to drop out. This means that the responses ultimately gathered may not come from a representative sample. "The concern is not response rate, but response bias," Schulman said.

Harvard Professor Christopher Winship agreed with Schulman. "If you have a response rate of 10 percent and there is no bias, you are much better off than with a response rate of 80 percent with bias," Winship said. "More importantly, if you have a response rate of 80 percent and don't know what your bias is, that is almost the same as adding plus or minus 20 percent [chance of error]."

Alisa Rubin Kurshan, vice president for strategic planning at the United Jewish Appeal Federation added that researchers need to examine what types of studies will be most beneficial to the Jewish population. "What questions do we need to ask to get us to model the kind of thinking that needs to take place?" she asked.

Institute founder Michael Steinhardt made a few brief remarks to conclude the conference. "The Jewish world is filled with reasons for pessimism," he said. "I hope in the not-too-distant future we can turn this quantitative stuff into some real policy judgments that will lead to changes in the Jewish world.