A questionnaire to collect information for the ASA Membership Directory was mailed to all members in October 1998. Members had the option of completing the paper form and returning it to the ASA office or completing the form online by accessing the Members Only section of the ASA Web site (the member’s login and password were imprinted on the paper copy). We received completed forms from 5,500 members (about 30% response rate); of these, 2,262 completed the form online.

This report summarizes some of the information from the Directory Questionnaire. Appendix A includes a copy of the questionnaire, Checklist A, Colleges and Universities, and Checklist B, Business, Industry, and Government Organizations. Checklist A contains 221 colleges and universities compiled from the ASA membership data base and was first used in the 1995 Directory Questionnaire. Checklist B contains 124 business, industry and government organizations. It was created by reviewing a list of organizations compiled from the membership database by the Statistics Partnership Among Academe, Industry, and Government (SPAIG) as part of their work for the ASA Salary Survey; any organization that had 10 or more ASA members listed was included on Checklist B. For comparison, data from the 1997 Membership Survey (N = 1000, response rate = 54.6%) are also included.

Question 2 requested information on the member’s area of primary employment. Table 1 summarizes the results for the nine categories given in the question and compares the results to the 1997 Membership Survey. The nonresponse rate for this question from the Directory Questionnaire was 3.9%; for the comparable question on the Membership Survey, the nonresponse rate was 0.2%.

* No category on questionnaire

In question 2C, members were asked to enter the code from Checklist A or Checklist B if their place of employment was listed on either checklist. If not listed, they were to leave the code field blank. The frequency of responses from the place of employment code are shown in Appendix B. Of those who responded to the questionnaire, only 1,108 (20% of the respondents) entered a code in this field. Thirteen academic institutions and 16 business, industry, and government organizations on the checklists had 10 or more ASA members on staff who responded. As only 6% of ASA members have reported this information, no reliable conclusions can be drawn.

Question 3 requested information on degrees earned by each member. The data for Highest Degree Earned is shown in Table 2 and displayed. While the nonresponse rate for this question was quite high (17%), the results are similar to the results from the 1997 Membership Survey, with a nonresponse rate of 0.4%.

Question 6A asked respondents to report year of birth. The data for age are shown in Table 3. The nonresponse rate for this item on the Directory Questionnaire was 18%, while the nonresponse rate for the same item on the Membership Survey was 5%. Again, the results for both years are very similar.

Question 6B asked respondents to identify their gender. The nonresponse rate for this question was 15%. The data for gender are shown in Table 4. This information was not collected in the 1997 Membership Survey, so there are no comparable data.

Question 6D asked respondents to check the one response that best fit their race. These data are shown in Table 5; the nonresponse rate for this question was 18%. There are no comparable data from the 1997 Membership Survey.

We also asked members to provide us with a Hispanic/Latino indicator; 141 members (2.6%) indicated that they were Hispanic/Latino.

Table 6, shown below, summarizes the members’ preferences for the Directory format. Based upon this information, ASA will produce the Directory in both paper and CD-ROM formats, and will supply a set of diskettes upon request.