The Evolution of Research Methods and Techniques Applied on the Terrorism Academic Papers

This article examines the research methods and techniques applied on academic papers related to terrorism. This is done through an extensive review and analysis of one thousand five hundred (1,500) papers that were published in twenty different journals such as American Economic Review, Journal of Policy Modeling, Economic Modeling, Journal of Economic Literature, Quality and Quantity, Journal of Global History, Journal of Social History, Quarterly Journal of Political Sciences, Journal of Politics, The Sociological Review, Critical Studies on Terrorism, Foreign Affairs, Global Crime, Intelligence and National Security, Politics, Religion & Ideology, Terrorism and Political Violence, Terrorism and Political Violence Security Studies, Journal of Military Ethics, Journal of Conflict Resolution within a 30-years period (1990–2020). It was observed that at different period in time, all these one thousand five hundred (1,500) academic papers always keep a constant transformation of its research methods and techniques that invoked the uses of different and new quantitative and qualitative frameworks of analysis to facilitate the explanation of the complex and dynamic behavior of terrorism. Finally, this research proposes a new research field entitled Terrorismology.