Abstract

The purpose of this research was to translate and validate Attitude towards War and Peace Scale in Urdu language, and to examine the factor validity of the scale and the intercorrelations among study variables in Pakistan. In the first phase of the study, Brislin’s guidelines for translation of the APWS were applied to obtain an Urdu version of the scale, 50 students from KP, Pakistan were selected for pilot testing. In sample of pilot study 31 were males and 19 were females with the age mean 26.36 years (SD=9.62). In the second phase, cross-sectional validity of our Urdu-translated scale was conducted with 487 respondents, 298 of them being male (61.2%) and 189 female (38.8%) with mean age of 24.80 years (SD=6.75). The reliability of the translated APWS was found to be acceptable with Cronbach’s alpha of 0.71 and 0.59 for subscale peace and war. Model fit indices improved significantly through iterative adjustments, resulting in a final model with RMSEA=0.05, IFI=0.96, CFI=0.96, and TLI=0.94. Correlation analysis revealed that age positively correlated with income (r=0.45, p<.01), education (r=0.50, p<.01), and attitude towards peace (r=0.30, p<.01). Gender differences were significant (p<.00), with females exhibiting higher attitudes towards peace (M=49.42, SD=8.54) compared to males (M=45.65, SD=11.16). These results affirm the scale's reliability and validity, making it a valuable tool for future research and interventions in peacebuilding and conflict resolution within Pakistan.