Mary Patrice Erdmans | Polish American Historical Association Membership Survey, 2007 | Polish American Studies, 65.1

Polish American Historical Association Membership Survey, 2007

by
Mary Patrice Erdmans

At the annual meeting of the Polish American Historical Association in Atlanta, Georgia, the Board of Directors voted to conduct a survey of our members. Our purpose was to understand our members and their interests better, to document their past and present involvement in the organization, and to learn how frequently they read our journal and newsletter or visited our website. We also wanted to give our members an opportunity to express their opinions about our conference and publications, and make suggestions for improving the organization. To achieve these ends, we designed a two-page questionnaire and sent it to individual members (whose dues were paid through 2006) in the spring 2007 PAHA Newsletter. We sent 480 questionnaires and had 167 returned, representing a respectable response rate of 35 percent. We might have improved the response rate by including a return envelope with the questionnaire. As such, those who took the time to complete and return the questionnaire are likely to represent the more active, concerned, and engaged members of our organization. This report provides a summary of what we learned from the member survey.

DEMOGRAPHIC DESCRIPTION OF PAHA MEMBERS

When compared with the larger population, our respondents are disproportionately older and male. While their ages ranged from 24 to 100, over one-half of the respondents were born before World War II (see table 1). According to the 2000 U.S. census, 12 percent of the total population (and 12 percent of the Polish American population) was 65 years of age or older, while 57 percent of our members were at this standard retirement age. The age distribution may represent sample bias as older people are more likely to be retired and have more free time to complete a questionnaire, but we also believe this represents our organization (as evident by the audience at PAHA conferences). Moreover, while most of those older than 65 years of age are retired, 20 percent are still working, and most of them full-time (three respondents in their 80s are still working full time including one member who is 89 years old!). While one-third of the respondents are in the middle of their occupational years (working full- or part-time and under the age of 65), it is important that we continue to recruit new, younger members.

TABLE 1: AGE OF PAHA MEMBERS
AGE GROUP	NUMBER	PERCENT
24–38	5	3
40s	15	9
50s	28	17
60s	38	24
70s	42	26
80s	29	18
90–100	ÖÖ5	ÖÖ3
Total	162	100

Five of the respondents did not report their age.

Three-quarters of our respondents were men. The fact that men outnumber women 2 to 1 reflects several things. First, considering the later entry of women into the paid labor force and the older age of our members, a cohort effect may be operating.¹ If so, we would expect to find women over represented in the younger age groups and under represented in the older groups. Instead, men and women were equally distributed across age groups. The mean age was 67.5 for men and 65.3 for women; 72 percent of the men were 60 years of age or older compared with 65 percent of the women. Given the similar age distributions, it would appear that women's late entrance does little to explain the disparity. A second factor to consider is that women are still under represented in the discipline of history. In 1999, only 40 percent of all new doctorates in history were awarded to women, and that year women also composed only a quarter of all history Ph.D.s in the United States.² So, while more women are becoming professional historians, they are not yet equally represented in the discipline. Even so, we should expect that the disparity between men and women would be less in the newest cohort. Yet, of those respondents who joined PAHA between 2000 and 2006, men outnumber women 34 to 12 so the disparity is increasing rather than decreasing. Moreover, the men are more likely to be younger as 30 percent of the newest male recruits are less than 50 years of age, while only two of the newest women recruits were. These demographics suggest that as an organization, we should find ways to encourage more women to complete their doctorates and to join PAHA.

Overall, our members are very educated, which is not surprising given that PAHA is a professional organization. Three quarters of the respondents have earned graduate degrees. Men and women have similar levels of educational attainment except that men are more likely than women to have professional degrees (for example, in law and medicine). Polish Americans as a group have more education than the general population. According to the 2000 census, 31 percent of Polish Americans compared with 24 percent of the total U.S. population had at least a bachelor's degree. Almost every one of our respondents had at least a bachelor's degree (96%), and 36 percent had doctorate degrees. A third of the post secondary degrees were in the arts and humanities, with history as the most frequent field of study (n=38), education the next (n=21), followed by theology (n=12).

More than one-half of the respondents were retired (54%), and a third were working full time. As expected, given the high levels of education, our members have or had professional occupations. Almost one-half of our respondents worked in a field related to education (including 40 college professors, 17 high school teachers, and eight librarians), and only eleven were clearly identified as working in religious occupations. The others worked in business (n=26), the professions (law, engineering and medicine), and a handful as social service providers, government officials, computer scientists, along with a "longshoreman," a "flight attendant," and a "mailman."

PAHA represents a Polish American (rather than Polish) population. According to the survey (and data obtained from our mailing list), our members were born and live in America rather than Poland. Not only were 90 percent born in America, but almost two-thirds of the respondents were at least third generation: 64 percent of their mothers were born in America and 60 percent of the fathers. Despite their third and fourth-generation status, most of our respondents reported that they speak and read Polish. Roughly a quarter of the respondents read and speak Polish fluently, while another one-third speak conversational Polish and read Polish with some assistance. The respondents 70 years of age or older are most likely to read and speak Polish, followed by those in their 30s and 40s, while those in their 50s and 60s are the least likely to speak and read Polish. Women are as likely as men to be fluent in Polish.

Of those respondents born abroad, 13 were born in Poland and four in other countries. The respondents who immigrated to America represent various migration waves: eight arrived during World War II and in the post-World War II era (1941–1957); four arrived during the first half of the 1960s; and three arrived between 1980 and 1991 (the latest arrival). Currently, only eight of our members live in Poland; however, we have actively encouraged Polish scholars to pursue Polonian studies, to present at conferences, and to become members. Toward that end we recently sent a complete collection of Polish American Studies to the History Institute library at the University of Gdan;sk to be used in Polonia studies courses. We have also made it more possible for graduate students to travel from Poland by offering a travel award for the best student paper presented at the conference. In addition, PAHA executives have worked to seat at least one scholar from Poland on the board of directors in recent years.

INVOLVEMENT IN PAHA

While our younger members are more likely to have joined more recently, the older age of our members is not always a reflection of the length of time they have been in the organization. Of interest is that almost 40 percent of the respondents became members of PAHA in the last seven years, and less than a quarter of them have been members for more than thirty years (see Table 2). Moreover, some of the oldest members of our organization have only just recently joined our organization. In fact, a quarter of our members who are 70 years of age or older became members of PAHA in the last five years. What this suggests is that even though our members are older, because we continue to attract new members we are not a moribund organization.

TABLE 2: BECOMING A MEMBER OF PAHA

PERCENT:	Percentage of PAHA members who joined, by decade when they joined
NUMBER:	PAHA members who were 70 years of age or older at the time of the survey, by decade when they joined PAHA

	PERCENT	NUMBER
Before 1970s	14	13
1970s	13	8
1980s	13	6
1900s	22	22
2000+	39	14

Almost one-half of the respondents said they first heard about PAHA from a friend or colleague and a little more than one third heard about us through our journal. Only a smattering of respondents said they heard about us through other Polonian sources (for example, newspapers, organizational newsletters), our conference, or through the internet. This suggests one of two things, either we are not doing a very good job of using other venues to get out the word about PAHA, or that newspapers and other media are not useful venues for recruiting new members.

Most of the respondents read our publications. Only one person does not read our biannual newsletter. Again, this could be a bias of the sample given that the questionnaire was sent out with the newsletter and thus only those who opened the newsletter would have noticed the questionnaire. The great majority also regularly read the Polish American Studies: 50 percent read most of the articles in most of the issues; 39 percent usually read at least one article in every issue; 11 percent read the journal occasionally; and, only two respondents said they never read the journal. Older members were most likely to read every article in the journal and members employed or formerly employed in universities, schools and libraries read the journal regularly. This latter group represents our target audience as most of the articles in Polish American Studies are written by academics, in an academic style, and for an academic audience.

The importance of the journal as a source of member recruitment and retainment becomes even more important when compared with conference attendance. Two-thirds of our respondents have never attended a conference, and only a quarter have attended in the past ten years. A core of scholars present regularly at the annual conference that is always held on the first weekend in January in conjunction with the annual meetings of the American Historical Association. Meetings that take place in cities with large Polonian populations such as Chicago and New York are better attended than those in places such as Atlanta or Seattle. While the conference serves the needs of only a small group of our members, it nonetheless is an important venue for Polonian scholars to develop their scholarly research and it serves as an arena for vetting articles for the journal. Further comments about the conference are discussed below.

ELECTRONIC INVOLVEMENT

PAHA has maintained a website since 2004 (www.polishamericanstudies.org), and yet only 40 percent of the respondents have visited the website. Website use is correlated with age: two-thirds of the respondents younger than 60 years of age have used our website compared with only 20 percent of those over the age of 70. The most common reason people used the site was to get specific information related to the organization (for example, conference information, board member information, and general information about the mission and constitution of the organization). Others "stumbled" upon our website while surfing the internet or they looked at our site because of a general interest in Polonia.

Several respondents have gone to the website looking for back issues of Polish American Studies or checking to see if they could access our journal electronically. While they were disappointed, we are pleased to announce that members will soon be able to access all of our back issues of Polish American Studies on-line. We will disseminate more information about this in future newsletters and on the PAHA website.

In 2008, we hired a professional web designer to improve our site and to maintain it. This should help to solve many of the problems that respondents noted regarding links and accessibility of information. In addition, the webmaster will ensure that the site is updated more frequently, a suggestion that several respondents made. We will also be expanding our links and making the site more engaging, attractive and user-friendly.

While we continue to develop our electronic presence with an improved website and electronic access to our journal, we will also retain our conventional "paper" presence. Over half our respondents said that they would not read an electronic version of the newsletter. The inability or unwillingness to read the newsletter electronically is more characteristic of our older respondents: 68 percent of those younger than 60 years of age stated that they would read an electronic version while only 37 percent of those 70 years or older would. The centenarian in our sample, however, reported that he would read an electronic newsletter. Our members can remain confident that we will continue to send out paper copies of both the newsletter and journal for many years to come. Moreover, only the back issues of the journal will be electronically catalogued. The current issues will be available only in print form, and will be sent only to PAHA members.

COMMENTS AND SUGGESTIONS

Below is a summary of the comments and suggestions we received regarding our journal, newsletter, and the conference.

Polish American Studies

We received 133 written comments about the journal and they were overwhelmingly positive—only five people had a negative opinion. More than 48 percent of the respondents wrote in superlative terms that they thought the journal was "excellent" or "great" and another 42 percent used the positive adjectives "good" and "fine." Respondents described the journal as "informative," "educational," "useful," and "professional." Others remarked that the journal was a "vital contribution to Polonia," and that it was valuable for "the advancement of Polish American history and culture" and "for Polish studies scholars."

A few of the respondents suggested that we use more photos and improve the quality of their production. Several people suggested topics or ideas for articles including: an invited article in each issue that would widen our scope and reach across disciplines; articles about successful Polish Americans; and more articles about working-class Poles, Polonian literature, culture and art, and contemporary Polonian issues. While a few people wrote that they would prefer more essays or shorter and less scholarly articles, the overwhelming majority stressed the academic value of "a scholarly journal devoted to Polonia studies."

PAHA Newsletter

The comments that we received regarding the newsletter were mostly suggestions about what information they would like to see in the newsletter. Only 30 people wrote comments and their comments were very diverse. Some suggested changes that are outside the intent of the newsletter. The purpose of the newsletter is to keep our members informed about PAHA news and members' activities. Our newsletter is not an event calendar for all of Polonia, it is not a clearinghouse for information about Polonia (e.g., study abroad programs or grant information), it is not a scholarly or literary journal, and it is not a lobbying instrument for Polonia. We direct our readers to other organizations for this information (e.g., the Polish Genealogical Society of America is the more appropriate organization for people interested in genealogy). Some of the suggestions our members made that we could accommodate include the requests for more opinion essays by PAHA members, and shorter less scholarly essays about Polonian monuments, famous Polish Americans, or contemporary Polonian society. While Polish American Studies is our venue for the publication of scholarly articles about Polonia, the newsletter could be a venue for shorter, less scholarly articles and essays. If members are interested in contributing to the newsletter they should contact the newsletter editor, Dr. Stephen Leahy, through our headquarters at Central Connecticut State University in New Britain, Connecticut.

PAHA Annual Conference

We had only 31 comments regarding the conference. This could be a reflection of the small number of members who participate in or attend these annual events. Those who attended the conferences found them "enjoyable," "informative," and "engaging," however, both contemporary and past attendees noted the low attendance at the conference. Many of the comments were suggestions about how to increase attendance at the conference and they include breaking ties with the American Historical Association and holding the conference at a different time of the year, in a different place, or in conjunction with another organization's conference. Others suggested that we promote the conference earlier, more extensively, and to a wider audience. Still others suggested that we make the conference more interdisciplinary and work more aggressively to recruit graduate students. A general agreement among those who commented was that the conference would be improved by having more people at the conference, not necessarily to have more sessions or more presentations, but to capture a larger and more varied audience.

Conclusion

We would like to thank everyone who took the time to complete the questionnaire. Overall, the survey helps us to understand the demographic profile of our more engaged members (at least engaged enough to read our newsletter and return the questionnaire). The survey also provides an evaluation of our organizational venues (journal, newsletter conference, and website), and suggestions for future directions.

We are cognizant of the need to recruit new members, especially younger members, women and graduate students. As we move into electronic formats, we are now aware of the need to continue with the print versions of both the journal and the newsletter. And finally, we encourage our members to send scholarly articles to Polish American Studies, to send essays and short informative pieces to our newsletter, to visit our website for the most current information about PAHA, and to make plans to attend our annual conference, which will be held in New York City in 2009.

NOTES

I would like to thank Magda Jacques and Marek Dariusz Mikunda at the home office of the Polish American Historical Association for their help in distributing and collecting the questionnaires as well as inputting the data into SPSS format.

¹ One way that women entered the labor market in the 1950s and 1960s was through their vocation as nuns. In the mid-century, women in PAHA were likely to be nuns, however, none of our respondents indicated that they were or had been nuns.

² Robert B. Townsend, "The Status of Women and Minorities in the History Profession," Perspectives, April 2002 http://www.historians.org/Perspectives/Issues/2002.

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