Rational Choice Theory And Domestic Terrorism

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1. State your course research project’s specific research question.
“How safe are medical professionals from domestic terrorism and why it is important for Homeland Security”

2. Compare at least two theoretical approaches that might provide some insight into your research direction.
• Theory # 1 Rational Choice Theory o The explanation of the rational choice theory and how it is applied to terrorism is that it is presumed that terrorist acts of violence originate from premeditated and conscious choices. As stated in the Journal of Applied Security Research, “The rational choice theory offers a glimpse into the logical cognitive processes of not only human behavior generally but also the behavior of criminals, especially important to criminologists.
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As stated in terrorism and Political Violence article, “Theory offers a way of identifying and organizing important characteristics, relating them to causal relationships, and linking multiple factors at different levels of analysis” (Marsden, 2014). From here we can analyze a reading to further understand how a theoretical approach can help structure a research question. The big question is why terrorist do what they do. From observation we can learn more about their nature to better readiness ourselves against these dangerous individuals. There are many theories surrounding the subject of terrorism, almost too many to choose from. This has become a challenge for many researchers. The theory that explains a lot about my focus is the utilitarian ethical theory. This theory can be applied from a healthcare perspective as well as terrorism. The goal of this theory from a medical perspective is “achieving the greatest good for the greatest number of people” (Wagner, 2015). This statement is the exact opposite from a terrorist point of view they want to cause the greatest harm to the most number of people in a location such as a hospital. This journal article is about applying utilitarian theory from a nursing and disaster triage point of view. Terrorist cause disaster that is unnecessary but someone has to respond to the outcome of these attacks. There is a code of ethics nurses is supposed to follow and that is a strength the medical field can use against acts of terrorism. The reading also mentions how the use of resources can limit casualties. Many of the applications of this theory can be beneficial to the training and preparedness the medical field can provide against terroristic acts of violence. The understanding of this theory is predicting the consequences of an action. That can be applied to my topic in