VIENNA, Virginia, December 8, 2010- The December ABC News broadcast series “Afghanistan: Where Things Stand” with team coverage from George Stephanopoulos, Diane Sawyer, Christiane Amanpour, Martha Raddatz, Nick Schifrin, Bob Woodruff and Mike Boettcher which started airing on December 6^th relies heavily on data gathered in Afghanistan by ACSOR-Surveys, a D3 Systems (www.d3systems.com) subsidiary. The research was sponsored by ABC News, the BBC, ARD German TV and The Washington Post, with coverage by these outlets as well as by Reuters, CBS News, The Associated Press and United Press International among others.

As ABC reports, last year’s optimism has been shaken as sustained security and economic growth remain elusive, and in the face of continued fighting more respondents support attempts by the government of Afghanistan to reconcile with the Taliban. Opinions of the Taliban itself remain negative, indicating that support for negotiation may stem from frustration with poor security and continued conflict, rather than approval of the Taliban’s aims.

This is the sixth ACSOR survey in Afghanistan for ABC News and its media partners since 2005. The network’s coverage of these polls was cited in the 2010 Policy Impact Award of the American Association of Public Opinion Research, and ABC’s first survey in the series was recognized in both the University of Iowa/Gallup Award for Excellent Journalism Using Polls and the National Council on Public Polls Excellence in Media Coverage of Polls Award.

The latest survey was conducted by D3 Systems’ subsidiary, the Afghan Center for Socio-Economic and Opinion Research (ACSOR-Surveys), from October 29^th through November 13^th among a random sample of 1,691 Afghan adults in all of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces. The work was conducted by 209 interviewers in 34 supervised teams. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3.5%.  The net response rate was 81%.  The project was managed for ABC, BBC, ARD and The Washington Post by Langer Research Associates. An analytical report is available here at langerresearch.com.