Global Terrorism Database Codebook (pdf) - PleX

Description

This document reflects the collection and coding rules for the Global Terrorism Database (GTD), maintained by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START). It is the result of a deliberative and consultative process that was initially undertaken by the GTD Advisory Board primarily between January and May 2006. Subsequent revisions to this codebook have been made by GTD staff, with the guidance of the Advisory Board. Key changes, including the addition and removal of certain variables and values, are described below.

This codebook is divided into two broad areas. First, this introduction explains the origins of the GTD and key decisions made during the development of the GTD. Our goal is to be as transparent as possible regarding the data collection methodology, with a commitment to creating a highly comprehensive and consistent terrorism incident data set. We describe the GTD’s definition of terrorism, inclusion criteria and other definitional filtering mechanisms, and the current data collection methodology. Because the GTD is a terrorism incident database, the introduction concludes by defining single incident determination.

Second, the codebook outlines the eight categories of variables that constitute the GTD and defines the possible values of the variables. These categories include the GTD ID, incident date, incident location, incident information, attack information, target/victim information, perpetrator information, perpetrator statistics, claims of responsibility, weapon information, casualty information, consequences, kidnapping/hostage taking information, additional information, and source information.

In addition, users familiar with the GTD’s Data Collection Methodology are aware that incidents of terrorism from 1993 are not present in the GTD because they were lost prior to START’s compilation of the GTD from multiple data collection efforts. Several efforts were made to re‐ collect these incidents from original news sources. Unfortunately, due to the challenges of retrospective data collection for events that happened nearly 20 years ago, the number of 1993 cases for which sources were identified is only 15% of estimated attacks. As a consequence we exclude all 1993 attacks from the GTD data to prevent users from misinterpreting the low frequency in 1993 as an actual count. However, in an effort to ameliorate this gap, Appendix I provides country level statistics for incidents of terrorism for that year. These figures were obtained from an early report on the data compiled before the 1993 files were lost.



Release date: December 2013

Language: English

Publisher: START, GTD