NAME: conflictdata.txt TYPE: Observational study SIZE: 38,216 observations, 16 variables ARTICLE TITLE: African Conflict and Climate Data for an Undergraduate Research Project DESCRIPTIVE ABSTRACT: These data are records of violent political conflict events on the African continent. The records contain various descriptives of the conflicts as well as temperature information for the day from the nearest weather station. The temperatures have also been categorized based on the behavior of temperatures at a given location. SOURCES: The data are publicly available, and were obtained from: http://www.acleddata.com/data/ and http://www7.ncdc.noaa.gov/CDO/cdo (choosing the Global Summary of the Day (GSOD)), accessed February 2012. VARIABLE DESCRIPTIONS: The data are tab-delimited. The variable descriptors are below. Year: year of conflict event as assigned by ACLED EventType: type of conflict event (choices are Riots, Battles, or Violence against civilians) as assigned by ACLED Actor1: conflict actor as assigned by ACLED Actor2: conflict actor as assigned by ACLED Country: country of conflict event as assigned by ACLED Region: region of conflict event as assigned by ACLED Location: location of conflict event as assigned by ACLED ConflictLat: geographic latitude of the conflict event as assigned by ACLED ConflictLong: geographic longitude of the conflict event as assigned by ACLED StationID: weather station identification code as assigned by the GSOD (see special notes below) YrMoDy: further date information for the conflict event in Year/Month/Day format as assigned by ACLED MaxTemp: maximum temperature for the day assigned to the conflict event in degrees Fahrenheit as obtained from the GSOD data (see special notes below) StationName: name of the weather station as assigned by the GSOD StationLong: geographic latitude of the weather station as assigned by the GSOD station list StationLat: geographic longitude of the weather station as assigned by the GSOD station list TempCat: a temperature category {cold(C), medium(M), or hot(H)} assigned based on temperatures recorded at a given weather station (for given weather station (stationID), temperatures below/above one standard deviation below/above the mean for that station were classified 'cold'/'hot'; other values were classified 'medium') SPECIAL NOTES: These data are a result of a merging process described in the accompanying JSE article. For a given ACLED conflict event, a temperature from GSOD was assigned based on the 'nearest' day and weather station. Because temperatures are not availabe for every day in every region, the 'nearest' temperature in both space and time was needed. A simple distance formula was used with a 1 day distance in time equated to a 10 mile distance in space using the latitudes and longitudes of the conflict event and weather station, as well as recorded dates. There are many other variables available in the original source files. There is an additional dataset file that contains these observations aggregated by week (weeklydata.txt). STORY BEHIND THE DATA: These data were used for an undergraduate research project to investigate possible relationships between climate data and violent political conflict. Multiple hypotheses can be posed in a classroom or small group setting. This is a large dataset with many possible analysis method options (regression, chi-square, anova, etc.). These data are current and used for actual socio/economic/climatological research. PEDAGOGICAL NOTES: These data can be used to teach ANOVA, linear regression, t-tests, and chi-square tests. They invite multiple questions regarding independence of data and population definition and other statistical methodological assumptions (normality, confounding variables). The large size of the dataset also shows that statistical significance can be found when the results are not necessarily practically significant. SUBMITTED BY: Name: Darcie Delzell Affiliation: Wheaton College Surface address: 501 College Ave. Wheaton, IL 60187 e-mail address: darcie.delzell@wheaton.edu