Empirical Assessment of Domestic Radicalization (EADR)

The Empirical Assessment of Domestic Radicalization (EADR) report uses a mixed method, nested approach to explore a number of key research questions related to radicalization, including:

• what are the demographic, background, and radicalization differences between and within the different ideological milieus?
• are there important contextual, personal, ideological, or experiential differences between radicals who commit violent acts and those who do not?
• is it possible to identify sufficient pathways to violent extremism? and;
• are the causal mechanisms highlighted by extant theories of radicalization supported by empirical evidence?

To address these questions, EADR researchers built the largest known database on individual radicalization in the United States: Profiles of Individual Radicalization in the United States (PIRUS). The database includes 147 variables covering demographic, background, group affiliation, and ideological information for 1,473 violent and non-violent extremists from across the ideological spectrum. The database was analyzed using comparative descriptive statistics and multivariate logistic regression techniques. Additionally, project researchers produced 56 life-course narratives of individuals who radicalized in the U.S., which were analyzed using fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fs/QCA), a methodology that makes it possible to determine the causal conditions and pathways that are most salient for explaining radicalization to violence.