The utility of Reuters for events analysis in area studies: The case of Zambia-Zimbabwe interactions, 1982-1993

Principal investigators in the Global Events Data System project (GEDS) and others have argued that Reuters Library Report is a superior global source of events data because its coverage of the world's regions is relatively e ven and it is easily accessible on-line for automated or semi-automated cod ing. The question if Reuters should be coded in conjunction with regional a nd local sources is left open. We test three expectations: Reuters yields a greater number of events as a ell as more even reporting across COPDAB iss ue-areas than a regional and a local source; Reuters has high face validity ; and analysis of data from Reuters, a regional, and a local source will yi eld very different results. We perform tests of the 'concurrence' of data f rom Reuters, Africa Research Bulletin, and the Zimbabwe Herald covering int eractions between Zambia and Zimbabwe from January Ist 1982 to December 31s t 1993. Interrupted ARIMA time series and OLS measures of covariation are u sed to test whether substantive results change depending on the source(s) u sed. Renters yields the highest number of events, but the frequency of even ts varies greatly and so did the emphasis on different COPDAB issue-areas. Reuters does not tend to report the same events as the regional and local s ources; it has low face validity for selected quarters and leads to very di fferent inferences from those based on data from all three sources. These r esults indicate that Reuters is not a substitute for traditional newspaper sources but an important source to use in conjunction with them.