Violent radicalization (VR) within a community has typically been measured as a continuous variable; however, the concept may be better understood as consisting of discrete groups that justify violence of different types and under different circumstances. This paper explores this question through person-centered analyses of 13 items drawn from two commonly-used measures of violent radicalization (the Activism and Radicalism Intention Scale by Moskalenko and McCauley and the Sympathies for Violent Radicalization scale by Bhui et al.). We conducted latent class analyses across items from both the RIS and SyfoR within two general population samples from the U.S. (Dataset 1, n = 1042; Dataset 2, n = 999). As hypothesized, distinct classes were identifiable, and these classes were largely the same within the two distinct datasets. Findings suggest that person-centered analysis may be a highly meaningful approach to understanding violent radicalization, and that prevention and intervention programs may benefit from understanding these different groups.
Ellis et al. (Thu,) studied this question.