Development and Validation of Terrorism Anxiety Scale
Abstract
Objective: To develop and validate an indigenously compatible tool in the Urdu language for the assessment of anxiety specifically related to terrorism named the Terrorism Anxiety Scale (TAS).
Design: Cross-sectionalstudy.
Place and Duration of the Study: Sahiwal, Pakistan; December 2014 to September 2016.
Subjects and Method: Psychologists, experts, parents, and students were approached to conduct focus group discussions and interviews with psychologists and security personnel were also done, thus yielding an initial pool of items. A pilot study with 20 participants was conducted. A total of 260 adolescents (Mage=16.9yrs;SD=1.77) were approached for scale administration to assess psychometric properties of internal consistency reliability, 60 participants for convergent validity, and 50 participants for measuring divergent validity were involved.
Results and Conclusion: Two-factor solution was retained after varimax rotation method and internal consistency was observed significantly high. Convergent validity was significantly positive and divergent validity was moderately negative TAS happened to be a psychometrically precise tool for measuring Terrorism anxiety in correspondence with Pakistani culture.
