A Study of Crisis

Problem-Based Learning Exercise #1

POLS 5320 - Seminar in International Conflict and Cooperation

 Assignment for Feb. 24th Session 

The first part of this assignment is for you to become familiar with using the A Study in Crisis software.  There are two ways you will do this.  First, go to http://www.cidcm.umd.edu/icb/dataviewer/ and "play" with the database that you find there. This is the on-line version of the "old" CD-based software. Personally, I have found that "playing with" software of this sort is the best way to familiarize yourself with what is there. 

If you have any technical questions about how to operate the software, please let me know and I'll try my best to answer them for you. We will likely spend a fair amount of time working through the software technically in class as well.

But please take note of the following features:

• familiarize yourself with the links on the left margin. These are the major crisis attributes.
• then spend some time working through the Search feature (upper right corner link). You will need to choose either the actor or the systemic level dataset to proceed through this feature.
• take the time to click on some variables or the entire codebook. This will give the variable definitions. We will spend some time working through these next week.
• as we move forward, you may want to download the SPSS version for more full blown data analysis.