Challenges of measuring progress in Afghanistan using violence trends: the effects of aggregation, military operations, seasonality, weather, and other causal factors

Eric Gons, Jonathan Schroden, Ryan McAlinden, Marcus Gaul and Bret Van Poppel

Defense & Security Analysis, 2012, vol. 28, issue 2, 100-113

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.

Date: 2012
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DOI: 10.1080/14751798.2012.678164

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