Aviation Terrorism: An Analysis of Analyzing Antiterrorism Programs

This is the second in a series on aviation terrorism. (The first article is in the February 14, 1997 Issue of IBPP, V. 1, No. 12, and describes basic problems in psychological profiling.) The current article describes problems of analysis comprising (1) base rates of terrorism, (2) true and false positive and negatives of terrorist threat estimates, (3) the reliability, validity, social transformation, and scope of terrorist threat estimates, (4) need for an ongoing interdisciplinary analysis of terrorist-related information, (5) traditional human factors and the performance of antiterrorism personnel, and (6) additional research design and statistical Issues in developing an aviation antiterrorism program