Recommended
Data Sources for the Study of Terrorism
- Global
Terrorism Database (START, University of Maryland)
Open-source database including information on terrorist events
around the world from 1970 through 2007 (with annual updates
planned for the future).
- Polity
IV Project: Political Regime Characteristics and Transitions,
1800-2007 (Marshall & Jaggers, Center for Global
Policy, George Mason University; Colorado State University)
An annual, cross-national, time-series and polity-case formats
coding democratic and autocratic "patterns of authority"
and regime changes in all independent countries with total population
greater than 500,000 in 2007 (162 countries in 2007). (SPSS
and Excel data; PDF codebook)
- Terrorist
Organization Profiles (National Consortium for the Study
of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism)
Background information on more than 850 organizations that have
been known to engage in terrorist activity around the world
during the last four decades. Included for each organization
is information on bases of operations, organizational strength,
ideology, and goals.
- John
Jay & ARTIS Transnational Terrorism Database (Attack Network
Data) (Air Force Office of Scientific Research
(AFOSR)
Network data in JJATT describe the relations that individuals
shared in select attack networks. The codebooks describe the
nature of the data in detail, distinguishing between the operational
status of network members (the role in an attack of individual
"nodes") and the social ties between them.
- The
Political Terror Scale (Wood, Gibney, & Cornett,
UNC-Asheville, UNC-Chapel Hill)
A yearly report measuring physical integrity rights violations
world-wide; measures levels of political violence and terror
that a country experiences in a particular year based on a 5-level
"terror scale."
- UCDP/PRIO
Armed Conflict Dataset (Department of Peace and
Conflict Research, Uppsala University; Centre for the Study
of Civil War at the International Peace Research Institute in
Oslo
A dataset primarily intended for academic use in statistical
and macrolevel research, and complements the annual compendium
of ongoing armed conflicts published in the Journal of Peace
Research, as well as a forthcoming PCR online database, which
will be aimed at students, journalists, and policymakers and
contain qualitative overviews of recent conflicts worldwide.
- Al-Qa'ida's
Foreign Fighters in Iraq (Sinjar Records) (Combating
Terrorism Center at West Point)
Information from captured al-Qa'ida documents maintained in
the Defense Department's Harmony Data Base; records containing
background information on foreign fighters entering Iraq via
Syria over the last year, along with analysis report.
- Terrorism
in Western Europe: Events Data (TWEED) (Jan Oskar Engene,
Department of Comparative Politics, University of Bergen)
Contains information on events related to internal (domestic)
terrorism in 18 countries in Western Europe. The time period
covered is 1950 to 2004.
- An
Index of Deaths from the Conflict in Ireland (Conflict
Archive on Internet, University of Ulster )
Lists all deaths connected to that conflict, both Irish and
British. Fatalities outside of the United Kingdom and Ireland
are included when they are connected to Republican or Ulsterist
interests, such as IRA agents killed abroad.
- Country
Reports on Terrorism (U.S. Department of State)
State department's official public report on terrorist activities
around the globe. Documents both terrorist acts and what country's
have done to try to limit terrorism.
- State
Sponsors of Terrorism (U.S. Department of State)
Countries determined by the Secretary of State to have repeatedly
provided support for acts of international terrorism are designated
pursuant to three laws: section 6(j) of the Export Administration
Act, section 40 of the Arms Export Control Act, and section
620A of the Foreign Assistance Act. Currently there are four
countries designated under these authorities: Cuba, Iran, Sudan
and Syria.This data set relates what states are sponsoring terrorist
activities and how.
- Iranian
Strategy in Iraq: Politics and "Other Means" (Combating
Terrorism Center at West Point)
Documents declassified from the Department of Defense's
Harmony Database, along with analysis report on Iran's dual-strategy
of providing military aid to Iraqi militia groups while simultaneously
giving political support to Iraqi political parties
- The
Militant Ideology Atlas (Combating Terrorism Center
at West Point)
An in-depth study of the Jihadi Movement's top thinkers and
their most popular writings. This is the first systematic mapping
of the ideology inspiring al-Qaeda. The CTC's researchers spent
one year mining the most popular books and articles in al-Qaeda's
online library, profiling hundreds of figures in the Jihadi
Movement, and cataloging over 11,000 citations. The Executive
Report summarizes the main conclusions of this comprehensive
effort and provides policy-relevant recommendations informed
by these findings. The Research Compendium contains summaries
of all the texts used in the study as well as biographies of
the texts' authors and the figures they cite most.
- Cracks
in the Foundation: Leadership Schisms in al-Qa'ida from 1989-2006
(Combating Terrorism Center at West Point)
- Documents
declassified from the Department of Defense's Harmony Database,
along with analysis report analyzing the history of al-Qa'ida's
internal and long-running debates over the strategies and larger
goals of the jihadi movement. Many of these documents, captured
in the course of operations supporting the Global War on Terror,
have never before been available to the academic and policy
community.
- Harmony
and Disharmony: Exploiting Al-Qa'ida's Organizational Vulnerabilities
(Combating Terrorism Center at West Point)
Documents declassified from the Department of Defense's
Harmony Database, along with analysis report on al-Qa'ida's
organizational vulnerabilities. These documents, captured in
the course of operations supporting the GWOT, have never before
been made available to the academic and policy community. "Harmony
and Disharmony" includes a theoretically informed analysis
of potential opportunities to exploit al-Qa'ida's network vulnerabilities,
a case study of jihadi operational failure, and specific recommendations
for effectively addressing the evolving al-Qa'ida threat.
See
also: Recommended Websites
See
also: Organizations Conducting Terrorism
Research
to the Teaching
Terror home page
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Dr. James Forest, Director of Terrorism Studies at the U.S. Military
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