P 10 p 05 p 01 table 3 ols model predicting support

* p <.10 , ** p < .05 , *** p < .01
Table 3: OLS Model Predicting Support for Domestic Counter-Terrorism Policies.

Krueger, Best, and Johnson: Assessing Dimensions
Surveillance & Society 18(1)
117
Figure 3: Terror threat effect on support for domestic counterterrorism policy by effectiveness level.
We find that for those respondents with low scores (0, 1, or 2) on the effectiveness index, terrorism threat
has no significant association with domestic counterterrorism policy support, even when using the liberal
90% confidence level. This null condition comprises about half of the sample (scores of 0, 1, or 2 on the
effectiveness index). Only those that had scores of 3, 4, or 5 on the effectiveness index, also representing
about 50% of the sample, had positive statistically significant associations between terrorism threat and
support for domestic counterterror policies. This pattern supports hypothesis four; terror threat would only
associate with support for counterterrorism policies when there was some reasonable prospect of that policy
resolving the threat. This threshold is identified as believing that a majority of the domestic counterterrorism
policies would effectively reduce terrorism. The overall positive effect of perceived terrorism threat in
column one of Table 3 then is driven by just the half of respondents that consider these policies to be
generally effective tools to reduce terrorism in the United States. It seems that the attitudinal components
(i.e., effectiveness index) of the supposed trade-off indeed have relevance for understanding the structure of
domestic counterterrorism policy support and are not simply interesting antecedent attitudes with little
practical import as is sometimes found in studies of privacy and surveillance.
Conclusion
Public opinion scholarship commonly assumes that counterterrorism policy preferences are structured by
the security-liberty trade-off framework with policy attitudes formed by advantaging one value at the
expense of the other. Several European studies have offered strong evidence that ordinary individuals do
not typically think in terms of a trade-off when considering counterterrorism policies (van der Brock 2017;
Potoglou et al. 2010; Bellanova and Gonzalez-Fuster 2013). Despite this work probing the veracity of the
trade-off framework for understanding European attitudes, we still lack an overt examination about whether
US attitudes conform to this trade-off framework. A focus on the trade-off thinking in the US is warranted
because privacy and surveillance attitudes can vary greatly by culture and context and because the United
States’ approach to security often trickles over into the security arrangements of US allies.
-0.4
-0.2
0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1
0 Effective 1 Effective 2 Effective 3 Effective 4 Effective 5 Effective
Mean Terrorism Threat Effect with 90% Confidence Interval
Support for Domestic Counterterrorism Policy