Citation

Gons E, Schroden J, McAlinden R, Gaul M, Van Poppel B. Def. Secur. Anal. 2012; 28(2): 100-113.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2012, Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

10.1080/14751798.2012.678164

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Measuring nationwide progress of counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan using violence trends is difficult due to several factors: aggregation of data to the national level may obfuscate disparate local trends; the observed seasonality in violence makes comparisons difficult and may obscure progress; and short-term spikes or troughs -- attributable to weather, military operations and tempo, or holiday periods -- heavily influence simple averaging schemes. Despite these challenges, proper understanding of violence statistics is critical to estimating the effectiveness of military forces added during a surge or redeployed as part of transition. This article explores methods for analyzing observed violence trends to identify causal factors, to provide a comparable baseline, and to inform assessments at appropriate levels of aggregation. One methodology for seasonal adjustment of violence data is discussed and shown to provide a logical baseline for examining trends. An ordinary least squares regression model is developed and implemented using time-series violence data.