Can anyone recommend validated scales that tap into extremism and radicalization?
Thank you, Wilhelm. The scale looks interesting and I can even understand the german. I'm currently developing a generic scale for measuring extremism and violence in relation to extremism so I'm looking for inspiration.
I'm not quite sure this is what you are looking for, but Jose Liht developed a religious fundamentalism scale -- it's been translated into English and Spanish. (You can get the items at the attached link). Another possibility for inspiration is the authoritarian aggression sub-scale from Altemeyer's RWA scale. I've used both of those, though not typically for looking at violent extremism specifically.
When we measure extremism in our own work, we generally do it by looking at "divergence from the midpoint/mean" on specific items of interest. I'd guess there is more out there than I'm aware of, but your scale idea sound great! My limited sense is that most people measure something very specific to a particular context, and not a general self-report measurement. Or they use scales like SDO or RWA.
This isn't at all the self-report kind of thing you are looking for, but for inspiration, you might also check out the this violence assessment measurement:
Geoff Dean, Graeme Pettet, (2017) "The 3 R’s of risk assessment for violent extremism", Journal of Forensic Practice, Vol. 19 Issue: 2, pp.91-101, https://doi.org/10.1108/JFP-07-2016-0029
Hope this helps and good luck!
Article Religious Fundamentalism: An Empirically Derived Construct a...
Thank you very much for your reply and suggestions, Lucian.
Currently, I'm looking for inspiration from all the different approaches, so it's great with suggestions for established scales.
With our generic approach we are trying to capture extremism in various forms - including religious, political, case specific etc. Our scale will be greatly inspired by Moskalenko and McCauley (2009) - http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09546550902765508.
I'm curious about the divergence from the midpoint/mean method. What kind of items of interest do you use? Could you suggest a paper employing this approach?
Best, Simon
Dear Sir,
The term Radicalization, extremism or even terrorism, carry various definitions. Such as, in Pakistan, the concept of Jihad does not come under radicalization but for various western countries, the concept of Jihad is considered as an act of terrorism. This doesn't mean that I am trying to justify Jihad here but giving you such example is just to understand that such words do not posses a globally accepted definitions. I would suggest you to read https://www.usip.org/events/countering-radicalization-and-violent-extremism-pakistan
Similarly, in order to gauge radicalization, one need to find out certain words which may provide a link which justifies their presence in Radicalization. Such as, if you conduct a research work on Muslim text books, you need to find out particular words in order to justify radicalism tendency in the books. Quantifying the words will be your scale of radicalism.
Thank you for your reply, Javed.
I agree that the culture-specific context of radicalization is important. I employ a pragmatic approach examining both the genreic and the culture specific level of analysis. In the case of my current project, I am investigating generic, psychological processes of radicalization related to the definition found in Smidt (2013; https://www.icct.nl/download/file/ICCT-Schmid-Radicalisation-De-Radicalisation-Counter-Radicalisation-March-2013.pdf). In relation to this I was searching for for different ways to operationalize the measure of radicalization - both culture-specific and generic.
Best, Simon
https://www.icct.nl/download/file/ICCT-Schmid-Radicalisation-De-Radicalisation-Counter-Radicalisation-March-2013.pdf)
Our paper on developing and validating two generic scales pertaining to (1) endorsement of extremism and (2) acceptance of violent and/or illegal means has been published.
Please see:
Ozer & Bertelsen (2018). Capturing violent radicalization: Developing and validating scales measuring central aspects of radicalization. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology. Article Capturing violent radicalization: Developing and validating ...
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