Putting My Political Science Education to Good Use

As I mentioned in a recent article at The American Thinker, "Lies, Damned Lies, and CAIR's Statistics", one of the benefits (or drawbacks, depending on how you look at it) of getting a degree in Political Science at Ohio State is that as the top quantitative analysis PoliSci program in the country, all PoliSci students were required to take several polling research and data analysis classes.

Well, I put that education to good use once again in another article this morning at The American Thinker, "New Study: Political Islam Correlated to Support for Terrorism", which analyzes attitudes and opinions regarding support for terrorism in fourteen different countries in the Muslim world.

The study in question is "Correlates of Public Support for Terrorism in the Muslim World" by Ethan Bueno de Mesquita of Washington University in St. Louis. Analyzing data from the Pew Research Center, he finds that greater support for the role of Islam in politics (political Islam or Islamism) is correlated directly to the increased support for terrorism:

People who support a strong role for Islam in politics are more likely to also support terrorism. Perhaps more surprisingly, people who perceive Islam to play a large role in the politics of their home country are also more likely to support terrorism. (p. 7)

This study also puts to rest the tired line about how the lack of education, poverty, or political oppression in the Muslim world causes terrorism. Looking at the data, there is virtually no relationship at all with respect to any of these factors and support for terrorism, especially education, where no relationship exists at all.

I suppose I'm starting to see some dividends from all those polling research and political science statistics classes. I would have rather been in political theory, quite honestly.