1471-2458-11-797.pdf

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• A principal reason terrorism is effective at the societal level is that it draws together two key elements known to inflate risk estimates; ‘dread risk’, which involves threats seen as catastrophic, uncontrollable and arbitrary in their impacts, and the ‘unknown risk’ of hazards that

• may not be observable or where the mechanism of injury is unfamiliar [3

• National surveys after the September 11 attacks showed that around half of the U.S. adult population felt that they or their family were at personal risk of harm in a terrorist attack

• as it plays a key role in moti- vating individuals to engage in appropriate protective behaviours, including terrorism-related responses

• functional impacts (the so-called ‘white male effect’), meta-analyses show that middle age, female gender and ethnic minority status are factors associated with greater impacts following both natural disasters and terrorist inci- dents

• Australian research in 2007 identified high levels of concern and changes in living particularly among those of ethnic minority status

• ommenting on Canadian research, Lee et al [2] argue that information about the way individuals perceive and respond to such threats, prior to their occurrence, can be used in the develop- ment of strategies aimed at preparing for terrorism

• he aim of this study is to use pooled data from surveys conducted in 2007 and 2010 to determine socio-demographic and health factors associated with higher perceived risk of terrorism and evacuation response intentions, and to examine changes over time.

• Threat perception and response intentions were mea- sured on a five-point Likert scale from 1 (’not at all’) to 5 (’extremely’).

• In relation to the demographic variables, Australians with no formal educational qualifications were

• ignificantly more likely (AOR = 2.25, p < 0.001) to report that they perceived a terrorist attack as being very/extremely likely to occur, compared to those with university level qualifications; as were middle aged respondents (45-54 years) compared to young people (16-24 years) (AOR = 2.89, p < 0.001)

• spoke a language other than English at home (LOTE) were significantly less likely to report a terrorist attack as being very/extremely likely to occur

• People living in urban areas were significantly more likely to be very/extremely concerned that they or their family would be directly affected in the event of a terrorist attack

• Austra- lians who spoke a language other than English at home were significantly more likely to report having made changes in the way they lived due to the possibi- lity of terrorism

• Those without formal educational qualifications were significantly more likely to report high willingness to evacuate public facilities

• overage of these incidents has maintained terrorism as a ‘front of mind’ threat within the Australian population, possibly keeping the perceived likelihood of an incident relatively steady during this period

• In terrorism affected coun- tries, culture, appearance and religion have been found to be strong predictors of terrorism-related distress and appear to reflect increased stigmatisation of these groups