School Characteristics
Respondent Characteristics
6
School Characteristics
The 50 schools included in this study vary on a number of dimensions. They include 14 private and 36 public colleges and universities. Sixteen schools are in the Northeast, 11 in the South, 10 in the Midwest, and 13 in the West. The schools vary significantly in terms of the size of their student bodies: seven are small( less than 10,000 students), 14 are medium( 10,000-20,000 students), and 29 are large( with more than 20,000 students). Schools also vary in their selectivity. Seven are ranked among the 20“ Best Colleges / Universities” according to US News & World Report( 2015).
The 50 schools included in this study are home to an estimated 150,000 Jewish students. The schools vary in the estimated size of their Jewish populations and the share of those populations relative to their student bodies( Hillel International, n. d.). The majority of the schools( 34) have an active SJP chapter. 3 Only three schools reported no antisemitic incidents in 2015( as measured by the AMCHA Initiative, n. d.). For complete details see Table 1 in the Appendix.
Respondent Characteristics
Sixty percent of respondents participated in a Birthright Israel trip, while 40 % applied but did not participate. Thirty-three percent identified their Jewish denomination as Reform, 22 % as Conservative, 5 % as Orthodox, 35 % as either“ secular / culturally Jewish” or“ just Jewish,” and the remaining 5 % as some other denomination. Seventy-two percent of respondents had two Jewish parents. Twenty percent of respondents had no formal childhood Jewish education, 11 % attended Jewish supplementary school at most once a week, 46 % attended Jewish supplementary school more than once a week, and 23 % attended Jewish day school.
Fifty-nine percent of respondents identified as female and 40 % as male, while 1 % expressed some other gender identity. At the time they were surveyed, around 10 % of respondents were in their first year at college, 24 % were sophomores, 29 % were juniors, and 35 % were seniors, with an additional 2 % considering themselves some other class designation. As is common among both American college students( Eagan et al., 2015) and young adult Jews( Pew Research Center, 2013), the majority of respondents( 61 %) identified as politically liberal, with 22 % identifying as moderate and 17 % as conservative.