ANN ARBOR—As the first anniversary of the Egyptian revolution approaches on Jan. 25, sociologist Mansoor Moaddel is available to discuss trends in religious, political and cultural values in Egypt and other Arab countries.

Moaddel, who is affiliated with the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research and with Eastern Michigan University, directs the Middle Eastern Values Study, a systematic, comparative study of the values and attitudes of the population in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Iraq and other Islamic countries.

Findings from surveys conducted in Egypt and Lebanon in summer 2011 show that the Arab Spring movements are predominantly motivated by a desire for democracy and economic prosperity, according to Moaddel.

“Only about 9 percent of the respondents from both countries believed that these movements aimed to establish an Islamic government,” Moaddel said. “Fully 84 percent of Egyptians and 66 percent of Lebanese surveyed believed that these movements were motivated either by a desire for freedom and democracy, or a desire for economic prosperity.”

Established in 1949, the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research (ISR) is the world’s largest academic social science survey and research organization, and a world leader in developing and applying social science methodology, and in educating researchers and students from around the world. ISR conducts some of the most widely-cited studies in the nation, including the Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers, the American National Election Studies, the Monitoring the Future Study, the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, the Health and Retirement Study, the Columbia County Longitudinal Study and the National Survey of Black Americans. ISR researchers also collaborate with social scientists in more than 60 nations on the World Values Surveys and other projects, and the Institute has established formal ties with universities in Poland, China, and South Africa. ISR is also home to the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), the world’s largest digital social science data archive. Visit the ISR Web site at http://www.isr.umich.edu for more information.

Related Links:

• For more information about this research, visit: http://mevs.org
• Or download pdfs at: http://mevs.org/files/tmp/ArabSpring.pdf and http://mevs.org/files/tmp/TrendsSummary.pdf