Armed Group Pledges and Civilian Violence Data for Difference-in-Differences Analysis

Original data on pledges to al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, used in a Difference-in-Differences analysis of militant violence against civilians. The dataset was authored by Ilayda B. Onder and hosted on Harvard Dataverse, with a last update recorded on 2026-04-27.

Use Cases

• Testing the outbidding hypothesis based on pledges to transnational jihadist organizations.
• Analyzing patterns of violence restraint based on group characteristics like religious affiliation.
• Conducting causal inference studies on armed group behavior using the described Difference-in-Differences methodology.
• Investigating the relationship between terrorist designations and changes in violence against civilians.

Strengths

• Data is original and was used for a published academic study testing competing hypotheses.
• Analysis includes a distinction between non-religious organizations and groups not designated as terrorists.
• Last update timestamp is precisely recorded as 2026-04-27 16:54:32.

Limitations

• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count, file formats, and license information are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

Harvard Dataverse

Collection Method

Original data collection for academic research, likely involving event coding from conflict reports.

Time Range

Recent years (implied by 'pledges in recent years'), but specific range is not stated.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04 27 16:54:32; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Global, focusing on regions with armed groups pledging to AQ or IS, but specific countries are not stated.