specific shocks on social cohesion, additional work beyond existing indices may be needed given the importance of timing of data collection.

# _T RACKING C HANGES IN B EHAVIORS_

Measurement strategies should ideally track both attitudes as well as actual behaviors. Behaviors that can be tracked include participation in community-based collective action, interactions with other communities or outgroups, and interactions with local formal and informal institutions. Tracking these behaviors over time and across geographical units can yield insights into variation in social cohesion trends across different contexts. Primary surveys can be deployed at regular intervals to track self-reported household or individual behaviors (for example, interactions with local government institutions) or organization reported behaviors (for example, participation in voluntary organizations or village meetings). Incidence of events can also be tracked through primary surveys that collect information on lived experiences of specific events (such as conflict incidents), media reports (such as on incidence of violence in an area) or official and standardized statistics on the same (such as government collected crime or violence data).

# _E XISTING S OURCES_

Questions on tracked behaviors are included in barometer surveys, as well as the World Values Survey and Gallup. This includes questions on actual participation in voluntary associations or community groups or incidence and frequency of interactions with local institutions like the police or frontline government officials. As with the indices discussed above, given that these surveys ask about both attitudes and behaviors, and are collected at regular intervals of times and across regions, they form a key resource for understanding social cohesion, including temporal and cross-country comparison.

Beyond surveys, there are several existing databases that track incidents of violence and conflict, ownership of arms and other proxies of conflict. These include the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED) dataset, which collects dates, actors, locations, fatalities and types of a broad range of conflict events, largely by drawing on local news. Several countries also maintain databases to track local violence, including the Bangsamoro Conflict Monitoring system in the Philippines which collects violence data in Mindanao, or a national level system in Indonesia. While these incidents are hard to tie down at an individual level, they provide rich insight into the experience of violence at a community level.

# _A DVANTAGES_

Data sources that track behaviors are key in validating perception surveys and can be useful in designing and assessing prevention strategies. Behavior-related data helps assess the extent to which perceptions do or do not align with the attitudes of respondents. For instance, respondents may largely claim to trust their neighbors, but not actively participate in neighborhood associations, which can help identify disconnects and potential entry points. Tracking patterns of violence over time can help in designing and evaluating prevention and engagement strategies at the local level. For example, Berman et al. (2011) use data on violent incidents in Iraq to examine the impact of $2.9 billion in U.S. reconstruction funds allocated through the Commander’s Emergency Response Program (CERP) and related smaller programs. Similarly, Crost et al. (2016) use data on conflict related incidents at the village level to examine the impact of a cash transfer program in four provinces in the Philippines.

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