The War on Terror: A Data-Driven Learning Guide

Application

Events: Terrorist Acts or Not?

As described above, only certain events were included in the dataset. Consider CRITERION1 where researchers coded events to determine if they had a "political, economic, religious, or social goal." Coding choices were "Yes" or "No." What percentage of the events in this dataset did researchers determine met this criterion?

Now consider CRITERION2 where researchers coded events to determine if they had "intention to coerce, intimidate or publicize to larger audience(s)." Coding choices were "Yes" or "No." What percentage of the events in this dataset met this criterion?

Finally, look at CRITERION3 where researchers coded events to determine if they were "outside international humanitarian law." Coding choices were: "Yes" and "No." What percentage of events in this dataset met the third criterion?

Consequences of Terrorism

Next think about the psychosocial consequences of terrorist events. Consider the frequency distribution of PSYCHOSOCIAL coded as: "major," "minor," "moderate," "none," or "unknown." In which category did most of the events fall?

Targets

Now look at the targets of terrorist attacksTARGET_TYPE . Targets are coded into 27 categories, as shown in the frequency distribution. Given the length of the list, it may be helpful to look at the bar chart. What is the most common civilian target in this dataset? What is the second most common civilian target?

War on Terror

One way to evaluate the impact of the War on Terror using this dataset is to look at the number of attacks in each YEAR. For ease of interpretation, we recoded that variable into POST2001 such that all years from 1998-2001 are coded as 0, and while the years 2002-2004 are coded as 1. According to this dataset, were there fewer or more events before the War on Terror?

Events around the World

Consider the variable REGION, which categorizes where events took place. The regions include: "Australasia and Oceania," "Central America and Caribbean," "Central Asia," "East Asia," "Eastern Europe," "Middle East and North Africa," "North America," "Russia and the Newly Independent States (NIS)," "South America," "South Asia," "Southeast Asia," "Sub-Saharan Africa," and "Western Europe. " Look at the crosstab of POST2001 and REGION. Did North America experience more or less events prior to the War on Terror? Which two regions experienced the most events overall? Which experienced the fewest? In which regions did terrorist incidents increase, proportionally?

Events are also characterized by ATTACK_TYPE0. The categories are: "armed assault," "assassination," "basic assault," "bombing/explosion," "facility / infrastructure attack," "hijacking," "hostage taking (barricade incident)," "hostage taking (kidnapping)," and "unknown." Look at the crosstab of ATTACK_TYPE0 by REGION. Which region had the most "bombing/explosion" events? Which region had the most "hostage taking (kidnapping)" incidents? Which region had the most "facility/infrastructure" events?

Note: The online data analysis system (DAS) used on this site uses a system called Survey Documentation and Analysis (SDA), developed and maintained by the Computer-assisted Survey Methods Program (CSM) at the University of California, Berkeley. Documentation for DAS/SDA can be found on their Web site.

Goal & Concept - Dataset - Application - Interpretation & Summary - Bibliography