In the Spring of 1966, the Civil Rights Commission asked the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) to conduct a survey of Northern blacks to determine the effects, if any, of attending integrated versus segregated schools. The result was an extensive survey of 1651 black men and women, aged 21 to 45, living in the metropolitan areas of the North. This is how the study began. NORC was also interested in broader questions, and the study became a survey of the state of Northern blacks. The sample for this survey included 297 randomly selected "city blocks" in 25 different metropolitan areas in the North. The interviewers, all of whom were black, were assigned to selected blocks and told to systematically locate six black men and women in each block who were willing to be interviewed. A study of the effects of school integration involves many facets of the lives of black men and women. Their school experience might affect their chances of going to college, their abilities to get jobs, their feelings about white people, their attitudes toward integration, and their self-image and motivation; and in turn, all of these might affect other parts of their lives, such as their marriages. By the time NORC finished adding questions about the other areas in which they were interested, the final version of the interview took an average of 2 hours and contained nearly 500 questions and subquestions. (Author/JM)