III. >> M  ethodological Approaches to Human Rights Indicators >> Sources and data-generating mechanisms 1 Events-based data on human rights violations Events-based data on human rights violations (events-based data for short) refer to qualitative or quantitative data that can be linked to events characterized by the occurrence of human rights violations. The collected information primarily describes acts of human rights violations and identifies victims and perpetrators. The information is recorded in standardized fashion, using common definitions and classifications based on the human rights normative framework (see chap. I) that permit the compilation and consolidation of the relevant data. Thus, there could be quantitative data related Fig. VII to the number of victims, their age and weight, or qualitative data that describe category types such as sex and nationality of the victim and the category of human rights violations (e.g., arbitrary killing, arbitrary detention, torture or forced evictions).8 The data sources in this case include testimonies of victims or witnesses; information provided by the media and reports of States, civil society organizations, national human rights institutions and international human rights monitoring mechanisms, such as the special procedures of the United Nations (see, for example, box 13 on the recording of complaints statistics by the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions). Sources and data-generating mechanisms for indicators SOURCES AND DATA-GENERATING MECHANISMS 1 2 Events-based data Socioeconomic and administrative statistics 3 Perception and opinion surveys 4 Expert judgements Administrative data Statistical surveys Censuses 8. Sometimes, the qualitative data described here are labelled as “categorical”. Categorical data can take a finite set of non-ordered values (like a binary yes/no variable or some demographic characteristics like sex) or ordered values (such as scales of the seriousness of violations of law: murders, homicides, assaults, burglaries, robberies, etc.). 52 Human Rights Indicators