Measuring the role of community participation in honor crimes: Community-Instigation and Community-Assistance Honor Scale (CICAHS - A new scale)

Abstract

Honor-based crimes are acts of violence, often justified to restore honor, supported by tradition and social norms. Violence may be perpetrated by the immediate family and/or community. This study methodically developed and established the psychometric soundness of a new tool to measure the psychological factors that contribute to the community’s role in honor crimes. A random online sample (n ~ 600) was used for Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) to identify empirically derived factors. The results yielded Honor-Driven Behavior and Honor-Based Emotions supported by strong loadings, indicating theoretical cohesion of the items. Three Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA): 1) Full Scale CFA, 2) 2-Factor CFA (Honor-Driven Behavior and Honor-Based Emotions), 3) 4-Factor CFA (Honor-Driven Behavior, Honor-Based Emotions, Community-Instigated Enforcement, and Community-Assistance Enforcement), confirmed an incremental improvement of model fit through χ2 differences analyses between models. A series of statistically significant t-tests confirms gender differences between men and women in honor ideologies and the enforcement of honor, with women having stronger responses to violations of honor norms and supporting the enforcement of honor norms more often than men. A series of correlation tests produced no statistically significant results between age and honor ideologies. An overall trend in the results revealed that younger participants support honor norms and enforcement of honor norms, while another trend showed that older participants experience internalized emotions of dishonor more than the younger participants. The overall findings of this research provide a psychometrically sound measure of the community’s role in honor beliefs and retributions.