How can communities measure their level of violent radicalization to evaluate prevention programs?

So What?

In recent years, there has been an exponential growth in support for terrorism and targeted violence prevention programs and activities in the United States. Despite this, the field lacks reliable tools to effectively evaluate the impact of prevention programming in the current threat landscape. This undermines the ability of researchers and practitioners to assess whether these programs work as intended and determine which programs are most effective. One solution is to develop a way of measuring support for – and exposure to – violent radicalization at the community level.

Project Summary

This project will establish a valid means of measuring support for, and exposure to, violent radicalization at the community level. It will build on current survey instruments that assess violent radicalization, identifying new survey items based on input from subject matter experts and practitioners. It will then pilot and validate the new instrument.

Purpose/Objectives

The primary outcome of this project will be a survey instrument that can broadly measure levels of support for, and exposure to violent radicalization in the hopes of improving future prevention programming. Based on the study’s findings, researchers will finalize a valid measurement instrument for use by prevention researchers and practitioners alike.

Method

NCITE researchers will conduct the project using a mixed-methods approach that responds to the study’s key objectives:

• Objective 1: To identify patterns of responding to survey items assessing support for violent radicalization.
  • Researchers will analyze survey data from an existing population dataset.

• Objective 2: To refine and identify additional survey items relevant to violent radicalization today.
  • Researchers will revise (if needed) previous assessment items, and identify additional items to be included in the new adapted instrument.

• Objective 3: To test the psychometric properties of the refined final outcomes instrument.
  • Researchers will test the new instrument and collect quantitative and qualitative data. To obtain quantitative data, an online survey will be administered to a U.S. representative sample while qualitative data will be collected using interviews.

	Heidi Ellis, Ph.D. Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital Associate Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences Director of Trauma and Community Resilience Center Expertise: Youth mental health, trauma exposure, terrorism among adolescents, and violent extremism
	Alisa Miller, Ph.D. Boston Children’s Hospital Clinical Community Psychologist Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences Associate Director, Trauma and Community Resilience Center Expertise: Mental well-being of refugee and immigrant youth in the United States
	Stevan Weine, Ph.D. University Illinois Chicago Professor of Psychiatry College of Medicine Director of Global Medicine and Director of the Center for Global Health Expertise: Refugees and migrant populations, violent extremism, community interventions, mental health, health, and violence prevention