HiCN affiliate conducts opinion data collection in Syria

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In August 2013 HiCN affiliate Vera Mironova together with her co-author Sam Whitt began to track public opinion from inside the Syrian civil war, focusing on Syrian civilians and Free Syrian Army (FSA) soldiers on the frontlines of Aleppo and Idlib. They conducted behavior games, survey interviews and survey experiments with civilians and FSA soldiers (including women fighters) on a broad range of issues including their views on democracy, attitudes toward the United States and any possible Western military intervention, support for the FSA, willingness to negotiate peace with Assad, and prospects for Syrian unity after the war. To our knowledge, this is the first opinion data collection effort to be made publicly available since the beginning of the conflict.