Thanks for the reply; I had to take a break to accomplish some household chores.
I erred in saying one procedure worked and the other did not - due to wrong procedure call.
I changed my code to using 'ContainsKey', Verified that the index 'IndividualHousehold.FamilySize' was operating coprrectly but again an exception occurs on the sorted array: 'exception {"Failed to compare two elements in the array."} System.InvalidOperationException'. Argument exception: Object must be of type String! I'm at a loss on how work around this exception. TIA JP