The Statistical Yearbook of Bedouin Society in the Negev is dedicated to reporting and documenting the characteristics of the Bedouin population in the Negev and the changes occurring within this population over time. The goal of the yearbook is to reflect an up-to-date picture of Bedouin society in the Negev in order to make it accessible to decision-makers, policymakers, researchers, and civil society organizations.
The yearbook is based on a variety of data published by the Central Bureau of Statistics, the National Insurance Institute, the Employment Service, the Population and Immigration Authority, the Land Administration, and the Ministry of Education. Within the framework of these sources, a great deal of information is published about the Bedouin population in the Negev, but sometimes the data is not uniform and significant information gaps are discovered, making it difficult to draw a comprehensive picture of the Bedouin population in the Negev and the changes occurring within this society. The information gaps are reflected in the variability, frequency, and timing of reporting among official bodies, which leads to inconsistencies in the official data that is published, as well as under-sampling of Bedouin communities among some bodies, such as the Central Bureau of Statistics. The statistical yearbook seeks to address this challenge by concentrating and integrating the data of official bodies with data published by central research bodies such as the Knesset Research Institute and the Brookdale Institute, and others. For the first time, the statistical yearbook of Bedouin society centralizes the data from the various official bodies over time and in a comparative approach between different groups within and outside the Bedouin population in order to examine trends over time. The data presented in the yearbook indicates that there are significant gaps between the Bedouin population in the Negev and the rest of the population groups in Israel. These gaps, which reveal inequality in opportunities and resources, also exist among the Bedouin population itself. In other words, Bedouin society is heterogeneous and cannot be treated as a single entity.

In addition to presenting the descriptive data as published by official sources, the yearbook contains additional processing of administrative data by Negabia – the knowledge and research center of the Bedouin community in the Negev, with the aim of reflecting a more comprehensive picture of the areas of life of Bedouin society in the Negev. Throughout all chapters of the yearbook, the data are presented visually using charts. The statistical yearbook of Bedouin society focuses on seven main areas: demography, employment, wages, education, higher education, housing, and transportation. The data processing was also done in comparison with the Jewish population and the Arab population (non-Bedouin) in Israel, to the extent possible. These comparisons make it possible to identify the trends occurring among the Bedouin population in the Negev in relation to other groups in Israeli society and to identify the similarities, differences, and gaps that emerge between them. The following are the main areas that the yearbook deals with, and for each, the sources of the data are detailed, along with the complexity of their collection and compilation.