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Jonathan Boyd

ByJonathan Boyd, Jonathan Boyd

Opinion

Beware of fishy survey methods

Researching Jews, like researching any small, geographically skewed, hard-to-reach group, is an incredibly difficult thing to do, writes Jonathan Boyd

August 31, 2017 11:53
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3 min read

Let’s suppose, just for a moment, that you’re in the smoked salmon business. You’re keen to do well, of course — you want your parents to be proud — so you’re eager to calculate the size of your potential Jewish market. You commission a survey. And, after a short time, the results come in: you discover that 25 per cent of British Jews like smoked salmon. A ridiculously low estimate, I realise, but bear with me — this is just a thought exercise.

So how big is your market? Surely the calculation is simple. The 2011 Census demonstrates that Britain has a Jewish population of 265,000. Twenty five per cent of that equals 66,250 people. Done. Easy-peasy.

But hang on a minute. That figure is just for the Census of England and Wales, and you want to know the size of your UK market. So you need to refer to two other censuses — for Scotland and Northern Ireland — to find the total UK count. And that takes the total up to 271,000. Not a big difference, granted. But it does expand your market slightly, to 67,750 people.

OK. Are we done now?

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