Abstract
This chapter describes the development and interrater reliability analysis for a standardised research tool to analyse the characteristics of school shooting threats systematically, based on state-of-the-art knowledge. The instrument was developed on the basis of the current but not empirically tested approaches evaluating the seriousness of school shooting threats. An interrater reliability study was conducted following two rating phases and instrument revisions with 13 independent raters evaluating school shooting threat case records (N = 15). Most items showed high reliability after final modifications (90%; N = 88). The TARGET Threat Analysis Instrument (TTAI) is a reliable tool for testing current approaches and developing elaborated criteria to distinguish between school shooting threats which are meant to be serious and threats which are situational in that specific moment of threatening.
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The present study is part of the interdisciplinary 3 year research project TARGET (2013–2016), funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) of Germany (funding code 13N12646).
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Ahlig, N., Göbel, K., Allwinn, M., Fiedler, N., Leuschner, V., Scheithauer, H. (2020). Testing for Reliability of the TARGET Threat Analysis Instrument (TTAI): An Interdisciplinary Instrument for the Analysis of School Shooting Threats. In: Akhgar, B., Wells, D., Blanco, J. (eds) Investigating Radicalization Trends. Security Informatics and Law Enforcement. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25436-0_6
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