Content Validity of Conventional Questionnaire-based Measurement of Trust

Abstract

This study provides a comprehensive critical examination of the so-called standard trust variable, which is considered to be the most commonly used tool to measure trust through questionnaires. The critical focus follows the aspects of content validity through contrasting the data of standard trust measurement – both for the whole sample and at the individual level – with results of alternative, widespread questionnaire tools including the trust radius, the ANES trust question set and the trust index. This highly comprehensive examination of content validity, which is definitely a gap in the field of trust research, is made possible by data from our own survey. The main conclusion of the paper is that the standard trust variable too loosely identifies respondents who feel – by their own self-report – trust in others, since when compared with the other measures, it is consistently found that a significant proportion of these supposedly highly trusting individuals do not feel ‘generalised trust’.