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Abstract
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In 2012 the Journal of Quantitative Criminology released a previous special volume on "Quantitative Approaches to the Study of Terrorism." The contributions to this issue highlighted the methodological and statistical innovations that were taking place in the area of criminology-oriented terrorism studies. In their introduction (LaFree and Freilich 2012), the editors of this special issue pointed out that until then very few empirical studies of terrorism relied on inferential statistics or testing hypotheses with appropriate controls and accepted statistical methods. However, the editors also concluded (p. 5) that "the situation with regard to quantitative approaches to the study of terrorism has begun to rapidly change."
These changes have accelerated in the eight years since the earlier special issue was published. This is illustrated by a recent overview of Schuurman (2020), who examined articles published between 2007 and 2016 in nine leading journals on terrorism. Based on a sample of nearly 3500 articles, he concludes that the use of primary data and more sophisticated data collection and analytic methods have become far more common during this period. However, he also notes that there is still much room for improvement and that a minority of all published papers employ inferential statistics. Schuurman also points out that many scholars continue to work alone and that most authors are one-time contributors.
In the introduction to the 2012 special issue, the editors also explained that one of the main drivers for improving empirical work in the study of terrorism had been expanded funding opportunities, especially from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the National Institute of Justice and the National Science Foundation. However, in the last eight years, these U.S. funding agencies have been joined by research funds coming from other parts of the world. The most notable example is the European Union research funding program, previously called FP7 and more recently Horizon 2020 (see https://ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/en). The EU program includes various calls that are focused on or relevant to the study of radicalization, violent extremism and terrorism. It has already resulted in a substantial number of funded collaboration efforts, notably a recent project called Processes Leading to Organised Crime and Terrorist Networks (PROTON 2020). Over a three-year period, this ambitious project has brought together an
Language: en |