Exploring the measurement of political trust: A multilevel observational analysis of six Swedish public agencies
Journal article, 2024

Political trust is a well-used construct and serves both as an explanation and an outcome in the social sciences. Considering the importance of the construct,relatively little attention has been allocated to its measurement. While the existing literature on the measurement of political trust focuses on either developing and validating new scales, or scaling and equivalence assessment of the more general measures, this article contributes by analysing the contents of the widely used survey items of political trust. Put differently, what is in a typical political trust measure? The analysis uses relevant observational data from Sweden (n = 1760)with repeated questions over six public agencies, where the typically used trust measurement is regressed on theoretically motivated psychological antecedents of trust using a hierarchical heteroskedastic ordered probit model. Results imply that the typical trust measurement contains traces of perceived competence and less so perceived motivation. The results also suggest that political actor sdo carry meaning beyond the trust construct, influencing both the location and scale of the response distribution.

survey data

Political Trust

bayesian mixed effect scale-location

Sweden

Measurement

Author

Karl de Fine Licht

Chalmers, Technology Management and Economics, Science, Technology and Society

Bengt Brülde

Sverker Jagers

Björn Rönnerstrand

University of Gothenburg

Oscar Rydén

University of Gothenburg

Niklas Harring

Social Sciences and Humanities Open

25902911 (eISSN)

Vol. 10 100885

Subject Categories

Public Administration Studies

Political Science (excluding Public Administration Studies and Globalization Studies)

DOI

10.1016/j.ssaho.2024.100885

More information

Latest update

6/18/2024