Measurement of popular disturbance

This paper has identified some points of convergence in the works of Sorokin, Tilly, and Gurr regarding the measurement of popular disturbance and has adopted their three-dimensional approach based on size, duration, and intensity. In criticizing past studies which used an incident as the only unit of data coding, it has been argued that a disturbance can be decomposed into a series of action phases. It has also been proposed that the intensity of a given mode of action can be empirically measured by computing its probability of causing human injuries, police arrests, and property damage. Finally, it has been suggested that the overall magnitude of a disturbance incident is measurable as a sum total of action phase magnitudes each of which is computed by combining size, duration, and intensity of the phase into a summary index.