Predictors of Radicalization Outcomes in Adolescents

Dissertation project. Part 1: Developing a suitable framework and measurement instrument for outcomes of the radicalization process. Studies of the radicalization process often focus on support for or approval of politically motivated violence, including terrorism, as the outcome to be predicted. While there are reasons for this - there is much clearer consensus on political violence being problematic and hence worth studying than there is on what the outcome of radicalization could be beyond violence - it is not ideal because it wrongly implies that radicalization necessarily leads to political violence. However, attitudes and behaviour are not necessarily parallel - people can and do radicalize in terms of attitudes without engaging in political violence and engage in political violence without developing radical attitudes. Moreover, the terms radical and extremist are often used interchangeably and implicitly defined differently by different authors. This is problematic because it results in researchers using a shared terminology but still talking past each other. This first study suggests a framework where the baseline of attitudes is moderateness and the possible outcomes of the radicalization process, if it is undergone, are benevolent radicalism, malevolent radicalism, and extremism. These terms are defined in terms of attitudes and delineated from their relation to behavior. A measurement instrument is developed to distinguish these concepts which is applicable regardless of the ideology of radicalization.

Part 2: Longitudinal Study. Adolescents in different Austrian states and school types will be recruited for the study at age 14 and, over the following 2 years, be asked repeatedly to fill in questionnaires measuring radicalization outcomes (see above) and various supposed risk factors and protective factors. This will create a complex data set which will enable the testing of competing explanatory models of the radicalization process.