Chapter MEASURING T HREAT AS IT R ELATES TO S OCIAL P OLICY:P SYCHOMETRIC C ONSIDERATIONS James P. Clifton 1* and Christopher L. Aberson 2 1 University of California, Merced, USA 2 Humboldt State University, USA Abstract Intergroup threat theory (ITT) holds that different types of threats promote negative attitudes directed toward outgroups (e.g., Stephan & Stephan, 2000). ITT shows predictive power in a wide variety of in- tergroup contexts (Stephan & Stephan, 2000), such as: attitudes be- tween Whites and Blacks (Aberson & Gaffney, 2009), attitudes between Mexicans and Americans (Stephan, Diaz-Loving, & Duran, 2000b), and women’s attitudes toward men (Stephan, Stephan, Demitrakis, Yamada, & Clason, 2000a). The present chapter applies ITTs focus on threat to prediction of attitudes toward social policies with a particular focus on attitudes toward same-sex marriage. We propose that opposition to so- cial policies arise from perceived threats associated with the implemen- tation of those policies. Therefore, perceived threats are central to the understanding of policy attitudes, and the measurement of perceived threats as they relate to social policy is arguably of considerable im- portance in explaining policy attitudes. Using the example of attitudes toward same-sex marriage (n = 263), we demonstrate how (a) creating * E-mail address: jclifton@ucmerced.edu