Abstract :Internet media`s importance has proliferated in recent decades, becoming a vital component of contemporary life. Internet, social media, and information and communication technology have provided many folded benefits along with many psychological hazards like online violence. Online violence has various significant public health effects. A sound definition of online violence can be found in the framework of the World Health Organization (WHO), which defines violence as the deliberate use of physical power or threats against an individual or community that results in injury, death, psychological distress, or ill-development. In Pakistan, we did not find a suitable scale that could address the concerns of university students who are violated through online social media platforms. Therefore, we thought of a scale that would provide accessible data to national researchers by using it. Thus, the main aim of this paper was to validate the attitudes toward the online violence scale (ATOVS) in the cultural context of Pakistan on a sample of 1290 Pakistani University students. Exploratory factors analysis was applied to the 12 items to identify the relevant factors, which resulted in a uni-factor scale (1st half of the sample, N=600), the factor was named attitude towards online violence scale (ATOVS) based on previous literature. In the 2nd stage, Following EFA, confirmatory factor analysis was applied (2nd half of the sample, N=690) to confirm the factors identified through EFA. The psychometric tests showed strong and significant results for the ATOVS scale, which is now used by indigenous researchers. ATOVS holds the internal consistency of a=.92, which reflects that ATOVS is a psychometrically sound measure for the present and future studies in the research field. Contrasted group validity was also considered to provide additional support for the validity and reliability of the ATOVS. The results also showed that women are more exposed to online violence than men, which is a heinous problem for Pakistani society. Keywords : Online violence, attitude, violence, ATOVS, University students
