Development and Validation of Attitude Towards Honour Killing Scale

Abstract

The present study aimed at developing a valid and reliable scale for assessing attitudes towards honour killing in Pakistan. The scale was developed in three phases; item pool generation, exploratory factor analysis, and confirmatory factor analysis. The initial item pool was generated form in-depth interviews with professionals (i.e., lawyers, journalists, psychologists, religious scholars, police officials, and social activists) and perpetrators in jail. In order to validate the initial 19 item scale, 459 adults, within the age range of 18-60 years were recruited from the Federal capital city and other cities of Punjab by using convenient sampling technique. For validation of the factor structure, Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) was run using Maximum Likelihood (ML) extraction method and promax rotation method. The analysis yielded two factors (affirmation and deterrents of honour killing) that accounted for 32% variance. Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) was carried out to validate the factor structure explored through EFA. An independent sample of 695 adults was recruited for confirmatory study. Results of CFA indicated a good model fit for the final scale comprising 17 items. The Cronbach alpha coefficients for the two factors were .79 and .61, respectively. The convergent and discriminant validity of the final scale was also determined using the Gender Role Attitude Scale (Anila & Ansari, 1992) and Extremism Scale (Gilani & Altaf, 2005.