putting my political science education

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