Violent extremism is operationalized as attitudes, intentions, and past violence.

Evidence

In order to distinguish extremism from widely-studied concepts related to radicalization (e.g., including racism, xenophobia etc.), we there­ fore restricted the included literature to studies that implement indicators of violent extremism as outcome variable. Derived from McCauley and Moskalenko’s42 two-pyramid model of radicalization that distinguishes between cognitive and behav­ ioral extremism, we considered studies eligible if the outcome variable was concep­ tualized as a) violent extremist attitudes and beliefs (e.g., support for political violence and extremist groups or wanting to be or identifying as a member of a violent extremist group), b) violent extremist intentions (i.e., intending to use vio­ lence to achieve political goals in the future), and c) violent extremist behaviors (i.e., using or having used violence to achieve political goals in the past, e.g. being con­ victed of violent extremist crimes or reporting the use of past extremist violence). — Lea Echelmeyer, Anne-Marie Slotboom, and Frank Weerman, The Putative Effect of Identity on…, 34

Categorization

• DEFINE: Provides the three-tier outcome typology (attitudes/intentions/behaviors) the reader needs to compare construct definitions across studies.
• XREF: Maps onto McCauley and Moskalenko’s two-pyramid model, a candidate baseline for the reader’s own construct alignment. — connects to: Half the studied extremists harbored violent intent while in their organizations — Ryan Andrew Brown, Todd C. Helmus, Rajeev Ramchand, Alina I. Palimaru, Sarah Weilant, Ashley L. Rhoades, and Liisa Hiatt (RAND Corporation), Violent Extremism in America:…, 31; The radicalization literature overwhelmingly measures attitudes and intentions rather than actual violent behavior. — Lea Echelmeyer, Anne-Marie Slotboom, and Frank Weerman, The Putative Effect of Identity on…, 50