We aim to produce code that is clear, replicatable across machines and operating systems, and that leaves an easy-to-follow audit trail.
Working at the Historic Archive of the National Police (AHPN) of Guatemala, there are many skills I learned on the job. My many years of work on the team that studies the recovered documents have been like a custom-made course in how to do quantitative research.
The Archive documents I study are the result of 36 years of creation during civil war (1960 to 1996). Many of these documents are simply administrative—but we are able to use them to understand patterns that occurred during the conflict, to get a sense of what mattered to the National Police and what didn’t. Our quantitative research shows us the Police behavior in broad strokes. ...
Romesh Silva and Patrick Ball. “The Demography of Large-Scale Human Rights Atrocities: Integrating demographic and statistical analysis into post-conflicthistorical clarification in Timor-Leste.” Paper presented at the 2006 meetings of the Population Association of America.
Welcome to the web data resource for the International Center for Human Rights Research (Centro Internacional para Investigaciones en Derechos Humanos, or CIIDH). Here you will find raw data on human rights violations in Guatemala during the period 1960-1996. You're welcome to use it for your own statistical analyses.
ASCII delimited (csv)
Resource Information
Data Dictionary
Value Labels
File Structure (Variables)
These files are between 300-700 kilobytes. The data are stored in a zipped compression format.
For an explanation of how the data are structured and what the variables represent, see the data dictionary.
If you use ...
Audrey Chapman and Patrick Ball. “The Truth of Truth Commissions: Comparative Lessons from Haiti, South Africa, and Guatemala.” Human Rights Quarterly. 23(4):1-42. 2001
Patrick Ball. “Making the Case: The Role of Statistics in Human Rights Reporting.” Statistical Journal of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe. 18(2-3):163-174. 2001.
Patrick Ball and Miguel Cruz (2003). “Human freedom and free software: Why choices about technology matter to human rights advocates.”
Patrick Ball (2004). “Statistics,” in Encyclopedia of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity. ed. by Dinah L. Shelton, Howard Adelman, Frank Chalk, Alexandre Kiss & William A. Schabas. Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Gale.
Romesh Silva and Patrick Ball. “On the Use of Sample Surveys and Multiple Systems Estimations in Assessing Large-Scale Human Rights Violations: Recent Experiences from Timor-Leste.” Proceedings of the Social Statistics Section – Joint Statistical Meetings. New York, (USA). August, 2005.
Patrick Ball (2005). “Free Software,” in The Encyclopedia of Science, Technology, and Ethics. ed. by Carl Mitcham. Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Gale.
Patrick Ball. “On the Quantification of Horror: Field Notes on Statistical Analysis of Human Rights Violations.” in Repression and Mobilization, ed. by Christian Davenport, Hank Johnston, and Carol Mueller. Minneapolis: U Minnesota P. 2005.
The coding, from my perspective, is the heart of the project. I say this, because the coding team has the responsibility of selecting documents according to the random sample, recording the documents’ contents, and applying the criteria to convert that content into an entry in a quantitative database. Not to mention the fact that this team has the privilege of being in direct contact with the documents.
At present, because of advanced organizational processes, not everyone has a chance to hold an original document in their hands. The quantitative study had many advantages in this regard; since we started work in parallel with the archival ...
Following a brutal 11-year civil war, the Parliament of Sierra Leone called for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) to create "an impartial, historical record of the conflict", and "address impunity; respond to the needs of victims; promote healing and reconciliation; and prevent a repetition of the violations and abuses suffered." The full text of the TRC report is available on the Sierra Leone Web.
HRDAG assisted the TRC to build a systematic data coding system, electronic database, and secure data analysis process to manage the thousands of statements given to them in the course of their work. Dr. Ball visited Freetown twice, and HRDAG ...
Text in English
Para evaluar afirmaciones sobre la reducción de la violencia letal en Colombia
En marzo de 2007, el Grupo de Análisis de Datos de Derechos Humanos (HRDAG por sus siglas en inglés) publicó un estudio con el título de "Para Evaluar Afirmaciones Sobre la Reducción de la Violencia Letal en Colombia." Los autores de dicho estudio evaluaron aseveraciones que la violencia en Colombia disminuyó tras la desmovilización de los paramilitares. Demostraron que tales afirmaciones se basan tanto en una sobreinterpretación de datos no ajustados como en inferencias causales infundadas. Los autores concluyeron que se requieren múltip...
Text in English
Assessing Claims of Declining Lethal Violence
In March 2007, HRDAG published a study entitled "Assessing Claims of Declining Lethal Violence in Colombia." The authors of this report evaluated assertions that violence in Colombia declined after the demobilization of paramilitaries. They showed that these claims rest both on the overinterpretation of unadjusted data and on unsound causal inferences. The authors concluded that multiple data sources are needed to estimate the true rates of violence in Colombia after demobilization and they suggest avenues for further research.
This research paper is also available in Spanish at ...
