A Scale Measuring Attitude Towards Terrorism

Abstract

Terrorists, irrespective of their country, class and culture, form one community in so far as their basic functions are concerned. Primarily, they intend to wage a psychological war to strike terror in the mind of people through assassinations, bomb explosions and other methods. The terrorists also aim at destroying and damaging utilities, communication network and industries with the intention of weakening the economic structure of the country. A Government confronted with the terrorist challenge may adopt a soft view on one hand and a tough uncompromising stand, on the other. The result is that many times people develop a hard non-resistant attitude towards the Government, for its apparently diffused policies. The stance of the For the powers that be, taking a stand in effectively confronting terror is best with almost irreconcilable issues. While a policy of no-deal or no-concession may look like a correct one, domestic or international pressure for a compromising approach may be too compelling to write off. For one thing, a policy of suppression and repression for elimination of terror negates the founding principles of the Welfare State. Whereas the families and relatives of the innocent victims held as hostages by terrorists consider it callous and inhuman on the part of the Government to turn down terrorists’ demand for hostage release, scientists and researchers foresee the long-term costs of capitulation and believe that wherever possible a hard line against bargaining must be maintained. The argument that the state’s efforts to contain and defeat terrorism do not create a parallel state-sponsored terrorism gets blurred. International law cannot be effective until and unless there is a clear and universally agreed definition of the term ‘terrorism’. There is also a need for all countries to identify the acts which define terrorism homegrown, foreign sponsored or exported, to effectively deal with it. Almost all municipal laws are unclear on the point and fail to evolve common strategies to fight terrorism as an international phenomenon. The present paper is an attempt to construct a scale, which will assess the attitude of the public towards terrorism and political violence. Emphasis has been laid on the dimensions which may accelerate or inhibit terrorism. The sample comprises 108 subjects in which 66 are males and 42 2 females and their mean age is 31.09 and 27.02 respectively with standard deviation of 9.137 and 6.711. Subjects were married and unmarried and most of them belonged to urban areas and hailed from educated middle income group. A summated rating scale with five-point response categories is developed. It contains 44 items. The internal consistency and the reliability of the scale are calculated. The present tool will be helpful to measure the attitude of a person towards terrorism. It may also enable an individual to know the casual dynamics of mass aggressions and may help in framing the future policy or programme of prevention of terrorism and attitudinal change in existing resources.