Saudi Arabia Youth and Violence Project
Mansoor Moaddel, P.I.
This developmental idealism project is a component of a larger project on youth and violence in Saudi Arabia and Egypt headed by Dr. Mansoor Moaddel. The project is motivated by the understanding that young adulthood is the crucial formative period of the life span for formulating, the period when the individual is most vulnerable to the influences of social and political forces. The project carried out a survey of youth between ages 18 and 25 in Saudi Arabia, as well as in Egypt, in 2005. Saudi youth were sampled from Jeddah, Riyadh, and Damman/Khobar. The survey questionnaire addressed a variety of issues, including attitudes about developmental idealism; attitudes toward important sociopolitical, gender, and religious issues; attitudes toward religious fundamentalism and political violence; the sources of epistemic authority–the sources of knowledge the youth use in forming opinion about important issues and deciding their educational goals and career–and the respondents’ backgrounds and social attributes.
Future analyses will focus on understanding possible influences on the endorsement and rejection of the various ideas and values measured. Potential influences include media exposure and demographic attributes.
