Gathered from February to July 2011, with a total of 16,173 respondents. The geographical spread of the respondents and the depth of surveying justifies the use of the expression “Arab public opinion,” as an indication of aggregate trends in public opinion, in this instance the responses to this survey represent the great majority of Arab public opinion, and cover most of the territorial vastness of the Arab homeland: the Maghreb, the Nile Valley, the Levant/Mesopotamia, and the Arabian Peninsula. These results are also the debut findings of the inaugural Arab Opinion Index, which has been established as the annual flagship project of the Arab Public Opinion Project itself, envisioned as a cornerstone of the ACRPS’ efforts. The program conducts surveys to determine public attitudes towards economic, social, and political issues that concern the Arab citizen. The project further aims to provide an open resource for Arab researchers, decision-makers, civil society organizations, and other actors and interested parties on the directions of public opinion in the Arab Homeland, one that would contribute to a deeper understanding of our societies, free of stereotypes and prejudices. In this way, the data will provide a knowledge base that can be utilized in the development of policies and plans that address problems and shortcomings, and aim to improve the conditions of the Arab people, in the belief that the ultimate goal of academically rigorous surveys, centered on the citizen, is to ameliorate the interests of the citizens. This first survey measures public opinion trends in any and all Arab countries in which the conduct of surveys was feasible for the ACRPS. It concerns itself with trends regarding many issues, including the following: the degree of citizens’ satisfaction with their economic conditions, standards of living, and the level of services they receive, as well as their views on democracy, political participation, and the impact of religion on general and political life. The Arab Opinion Index also contains questions that measure how much confidence citizens have in state institutions, how they define the sources of threats to their personal or national security, and their perceptions of their Arab surroundings. Defining the goals of the Arab Opinion Index, the questions it should contain and preparations for fieldwork initially took place during the last quarter of 2010, before the onset of the Arab revolutions. It was therefore necessary to amend the survey with specific questions that would gauge some of the public’s positions towards these revolutions. The Arab Opinion Index was conducted using a multistage cluster sampling approach, which is self-weighted and is particularly appropriate in cases where there is incomplete data on the countries being surveyed. The main results, included in this report, are reported with a 95% confidence limit, with an in-built margin of error of 3.5%. This report includes the main results of the public opinion survey, with a more complete set of findings to be published in a book which will be made available on the ACRPS website in order to give researchers the opportunity to make use of the data therein. The presentation of the results begins with public opinion in the Arab region as a whole and then addresses the results of each state separately. The average results of public opinion trends for the whole Arab region were calculated from the results of the 12 countries covered by the survey, and the results for each of the countries surveyed were weighted to reflect the relative population of each country. This method ensures that all countries’ populations are fairly represented.

Countries in which the Arab Opinion Index Survey was conducted