Who Are Connected to the Pittsburgh Jewish Community?

• Published in: Contemporary Jewry Vol. 29; no. 3; pp. 301 - 316
• Main Authors: Kaizar, Eloise E., Fienberg, Stephen E., Seltman, Howard, Stern, Sharon
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Dordrecht Springer 01.12.2009; Springer Netherlands
• Subjects: Adult education; Adults; Anthropology; Attrition; Bias; Childhood; Community life; Day schools; Formal education; Israel; Jewish culture; Jewish diaspora; Jews; Local Planning; Modeling; Participation; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Religious Studies; Response rates; Social Sciences; Sociology of Religion; Youth; Adult activities; Survey analysis; Childhood programs; Latent variable model; Nonresponse; Pittsburgh Jewish community study
• ISSN: 0147-1694; 1876-5165
• DOI: 10.1007/s12397-009-9017-8

The United Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh (PUJF) began a campaign to improve community planning, especially to determine programmatic priorities. Among the many questions they sought to answer was the relationship between childhood programs and retention of adults as active members of the community. We propose a new model to examine the relationship between childhood activities and adult connection to the community that looks at the adult activities in the community at the same time, while avoiding ad hoc indexes of connection. Using this model, we find evidence that childhood trips to Israel and participation in youth groups are most related to active adult members of the community. These results are robust to several model assumptions, including the assumption that the survey nonresponse did not bias the results.