The observation, measurement, and analysis of violent and contentious processes are essential parts of the scientific study of peace and conflict. However, concepts such as the level of repression, the number of individuals killed during a civil war, or the perception of members of an out-group, are often by definition difficult to observe directly. This is because governments, non-state groups, NGOs, international organizations, monitoring organizations, and other actors are not incentivized to make information about their actions systematically observable to analysts. In this context, latent variable models can play a valuable role by aggregating various behavioral indicators and signals together to help measure latent concepts of interest that would not otherwise be directly observable. Each of the articles in this special issue uses some form of a latent variable model or related measurement model to bring together observable pieces of information and estimate a set of values for the underlying theoretical concept of interest. Each of the articles pays special attention to the processes that make the observation of peace and conflict processes so challenging. As we highlight throughout this introductory article, the unifying framework we present in this special issue is validation. Though the substantive content of each of the articles in this special issue varies, they represent the diversity of substantive interests that span the study of peace and conflict, broadly conceived. Overall, we hope that the special issue becomes a standard reference for scholars interested in developing and validating new measurement models for the study of peace and conflict.

中文翻译：

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和平与冲突研究的概念和测量创新

暴力和有争议的过程的观察、测量和分析是和平与冲突科学研究的重要组成部分。然而，诸如镇压程度、内战期间被杀的人数或外部群体成员的看法等概念通常难以直接观察。这是因为政府、非国家团体、非政府组织、国际组织、监测组织和其他行为者没有动力让分析人员系统地观察到有关其行动的信息。在这种情况下，潜在变量模型可以通过将各种行为指标和信号聚合在一起来帮助衡量潜在的兴趣概念，否则这些概念将无法直接观察到，从而发挥重要作用。本期特刊中的每篇文章都使用某种形式的潜在变量模型或相关测量模型来汇集可观察到的信息，并为感兴趣的潜在理论概念估计一组值。每篇文章都特别关注使观察和平与冲突过程变得如此具有挑战性的过程。正如我们在这篇介绍性文章中强调的那样，我们在本期特刊中提出的统一框架是验证。尽管本特刊中每篇文章的实质性内容各不相同，但它们代表了涵盖广泛构思的和平与冲突研究的实质性利益的多样性。全面的，