Resilience to Violent Extremism: Validation of the Arabic BRAVE Measure

This study translates the Building Resilience to Violent Extremism (BRAVE) measure to assess individual and community resilience levels to resist, counter, and buffer violent extremism. The Arabic BRAVE measure translated and validated the original Grossman (2020) five factors scale. The Arabic BRAVE measure provided scores across the same five factors contextualized using data from 604 youth Arabs from five countries. Following analyses of its structural validity, reliability, and measurement invariance, the 14-item Arabic BRAVE measure was found to have good internal reliability according to its composite reliability and Cronbach’s alpha, which varied between 0.73 and 0.93. The overall structure and measurement of the models were assessed through confirmatory factor analysis and multi-group invariance testing. Evidence for the configural and partial metric (but not scalar or residuals) invariance of the factor structure was observed when comparing the male and female subsamples. The Arabic BRAVE measure is a much-needed tool that can help identify young people’s protective capacities against and vulnerabilities to violent extremism, incorporating various capital factors to assist in designing a culturally sensitive public health approach to countering the threat of extremism.