NSRE 2000-01 was the national, random-selection based screening process used as the basis of the National Jewish Population Survey of 2000-01.

NSRE included screening interviews with almost 175,000 American adults to determine whether they were Jewish, and if not, their religious identification  - if any.

The entire process of screening and interviewing was the National Study of Religion and Ethnicity was used to identify the 5,148 interviews which were used as the base for the NJPS 2000-01 study, and to weight the data for the NJPS data analysis.  Please see the NJPS 2000-01 Study Page for a detailed discussion of the results of the NSRE/NJPS process, and the Study Documentation for additional details.

Of the 174,660 interviews in the NSRE/NJPS screening data file, 4,027 were randomly selected for additional interviewing, beyond the questions asked of all non-Jewish persons during the screening process.   

The re-interview process was designed to gather more information on non-Jews and their households than the data collected during the screener interview on non-Jewish "screens."  The data on these 4,027 non-Jewish persons was then used: (1) to help weight the combined NJPS/NSRE respondents, and (2) to allow comparative analysis of NJPS Jewish respondents and NSRE non-Jewish respondents and their households.

National adult non-Jewish households in the United States

The NSRE 2000-2001 data file includes data from RDD (random digit dialed) interviews of American adults which determined their religion, and whether the respondent was eligible for the expanded Jewish survey interview. The National Study of Religion and Ethnicity was designed to identify Jewish households to be included in NJPS 2000-01, the National Jewish Population Study.

ALL 5,148 completed NJPS Jewish interviews derive from Jewish households identified in the NSRE screening process.  Weighting of the data for the NJPS interviews was based upon the NSRE interviews and data files.

There are three files zipped in the NSRE 2000-01 data file. These files were used to weight the NJPS and the NSRE respondents/households, and to provide additional information for the analysis of NJPS interviews.

(1) First, the 174,660 completed screening interviews which identified US adults as Jewish, as Persons of Jewish Background, and as non-Jewish.

(2) A data file of 2,559 screening incompletes - which were used as part of the weighting process for the NJPS-NSRE data. 

(3) After the initial screening was completed, 4,027 clearly non-Jewish persons were randomly selected and interviewed; they asked an intensive series of questions in order to assist in NJPS weighting and to have a sufficiently large enough sample of non-Jews to compare to Jewish survey respondents.

Note that these 4,027 interviews were referred to during the NJPS-NSRE interviewing process as "NSRE."  In the Appendix to the NJPS Strengths, Challenges, Diversity summary report,  the 4027 interviews are defined as NSRE.  But, in the context of the 1990 NSRI screening process, all three of the data files in the zipped file are the comparable data files to NSRI, although NSRI collected limited data on non-Jewish persons, as compared to the re-interview of 4,027 non-Jews from the 2000-01 screening process which collected much more data on American non-Jews for data comparisons in the reports.

Documentation

Users intending the NSRE data files (and/or the NJPS completed interview data file) should read the "Study Documentation," the "Appendices to Study Documentation," (excel files which document weighting calculations), the "Data File User Guide," and the Schulman Memo written after a review of the entire NJPS/NSRE process by Schulman and a research evaluation committee.