The Non-effect of Radicalization Duration on the Propensity for Violent Extremism in the United States

Abstract

To assist law enforcement and intelligence personnel in identifying factors that predict violence among known extremists, this study examines the effect that the duration of an ideological extremist’s radicalization process has on their propensity to be violent. Using the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism’s Profiles of Individual Radicalization in the United States 2017 dataset, this effect is measured across three multivariate logistic regressions and subjected to a series of robustness checks. Across each regression—the first on data without imputation, the second on data imputed via sub-group means, and the third on data imputed via multiple imputation by chained equations—radicalization duration lacked even marginal statistical significance as a predictor of violent behavior by an extremist.