Richard L' Legault

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Creating a Data Archive to Facilitate Research on
Understanding and Responding to Terrorism

• Richard L. Legault
• Kathleen J. Smarick
• University of Maryland
• Christopher D. Maxwell
• Michigan State University/The University of
  Michigan
• Steven Chermak
• Michigan State University

Paper presented at the Spring VAC Consortium
Meeting, May 14-15, 2007, Bellevue, WA
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Expanding Knowledge through Sharing Research
Materials

• In 2006,
• DHS NSF funded START to develop an archive of
  survey data related to terrorism, preparedness
  and public responses to terrorism
• NIJ funded ICPSR to develop an archive and data
  resource center for terrorism related social
  science data
• These similar goals led to a partnership between
  the two projects in 2007

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Terrorism and Preparedness Survey Archive (TaPSA)
Terrorism Data Resource Center (TDRC)
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• Archiving of social science data began in the
  United States in the early 1960s and several
  years later spread to the United Kingdom and
  elsewhere.
• Among the oldest and largest collection of
  digital science data archives are housed at
  ICPSR.
• Data holdings across ICPSRs archives exceed
  5,500 collections and 100,000 individual files.
• The core support of ICPSRs archiving and
  education activities is from over 500
  Universities and Research Centers from around the
  world.
• Many agencies across the U.S. Federal government
  support six topical archives at ICPSR
• U.S. Department of Justices Bureau of Justice
  Statistics and the National Institute of Justice,
  jointly sponsor the National Archive of Criminal
  Justice Data.

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• More than 60 researchers at 30 institutions
  around the world

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The Mission of START

• The Maryland START Center will help strengthen
  the nations ability to understand the root
  causes behind acts of terror and the motivations
  of terrorists and those who enable them. And that
  is unwelcome news for terrorists. Because the
  more we know about the underlying factors that
  foment terrorism, the better prepared we are to
  fight and ultimately defeat it
• One of the reasons the Department decided to
  establish a Center of Excellence dedicated to the
  social and psychological aspects of terrorism is
  because this is a vital, often overlooked piece
  of the terrorism puzzle. It is an area that
  deserves close examination. Because the fact is
  We do not fully understand the enemy we face
  today. The culture, lifestyle, belief system and
  practices of our adversary provide a stark
  contrast to our own.
• Charles M. McQueary, former Undersecretary,
• Science and Technology

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Mission of Data Archives

• To preserve research data for perpetuity.
• To facilitate and stimulate analysis of these
  data by distributing them in useable formats,
  creating finding aids (e.g., metadata), providing
  user support, and delivering educational
  programs.

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Goals of the Data Archive

• to encourage the diversity of analysis and
  opinions through reproduction and extension of an
  original investigators work
• to promote additional research that can test new
  or alternative hypotheses, or use methods of
  analysis not envisioned by or available to the
  original investigator
• to support studies to improve data collection
  methods and measurements
• to facilitate education of new researchers and,
• to assist in the creation of new datasets by
  combining data from multiple sources (Granda
  2006 OER 2006 SSHRC 2002).

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Why a Terrorism Archive?

• To facilitate the accountability and transparency
  of research results.
• To improve basic and applied research on
  terrorism
• To serve the growing profession and improve the
  training of terrorism scholars

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Planned Features

• Two Search Features
• Text in study description (Metadata)
• Text in variable level
• Online analysis
• Bibliography of Data-Related Literature
• Resource Guides
• Controlling Access to Sensitive Data
• Downloadable
• Restricted/License Agreement Access
• Data Enclave
• Content based data presentation for non-academic
  research

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Visualization Opportunities

• Geo-representations of descriptive data?
• Visual representations of online analyses?
• Suggestions?

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• This research was supported in part by an
  appointment to the U.S. Department of Homeland
  Security Research Opportunity Program
  administered by the Oak Ridge Institute for
  Science and Education through a cooperative
  agreement between the U.S. Department of Energy
  and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
  ORISE is managed by Oak Ridge Associated
  Universities (ORAU) under the DOE contract number
  DE-AC05-06OR23100. All opinions expressed in
  this paper are the authors and do not
  necessarily reflect the policies and views of
  DHS, DOE, or ORAU/ORISE. This project is
  sponsored by the Office for Research and
  Evaluation, National Institute of Justice, U.S.
  Department of Justice through an Inter-agency
  Agreement (2003-IJ-R-0004). The views expressed
  in this paper are those of the authors and do not
  necessarily reflect the official policy or
  position of any office or agency within the U.S.
  Department of Justice, the University of
  Michigan, or Michigan State University. This
  material is based upon work supported by the
  National Science Foundation under Grant No.
  524796.
• Comments pertaining to this presentation are
  invited and should be
• sent to Richard Legault at rlegault_at_start.umd.edu