OECD Guidelines on Measuring Trust OECD Guidelines on Measuring Trust Measuring on Guidelines OECD OECD Guidelines on Measuring Trust This work is published under the responsibility of the Secretary-General of the OECD. The opinions expressed and arguments employed herein do not necessarily reflect the official views of OECD member countries or those of the European Union. This document, as well as any data and map included herein, are without prejudice to the status of or sovereignty over any territory, to the delimitation of international frontiers and boundaries and to the name of any territory, city or area. Please cite this publication as: OECD (2017), OECD Guidelines on Measuring Trust, OECD Publishing, Paris. http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264278219-en ISBN 978-92-64-27820-2 (print) ISBN 978-92-64-27821-9 (PDF) ISBN 978-92-64-27822-6 (epub) The statistical data for Israel are supplied by and under the responsibility of the relevant Israeli authorities. 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FOREWORD Foreword Understanding and improving well-being requires solid evidence that can inform policymakers and citizens where, when, and for whom life is getting better. Since the Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi Commission highlighted the need to complement GDP with better measures of social, economic and environmental outcomes in 2009, the statistical community has made remarkable progress towards developing and producing such measures and regularly monitoring human well-being. Nevertheless, certain topics have not yet received the attention their importance for society’s progress might warrant. Trust is one of these topics, and these Guidelines on Measuring Trust, prepared under the umbrella of the OECD Better Life Initiative launched in 2011, represent an important step towards improving and expanding the system of well-being statistics further. The issue of trust, or lack of it, has mostly made headlines in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. Indeed, people’s trust in their public institutions fell sharply in most OECD countries and it has not since fully recovered to its pre-crisis levels. Yet, only a society where people cooperate with and express solidarity for one another, and where public institutions act competently and are accessible to all citizens enables a high quality of life for all. Trust in other people and trust in institutions are essential ingredients for social and economic progress while a prospering society, in turn, is one in which trust can blossom. It is therefore no surprise that several recent policy initiatives have stressed the need for better measures of trust. For instance, the OECD Trust Strategy was initiated during the 2013 OECD Ministerial Council meeting on Jobs, Equality and Trust to provide guidance, including methodological and measurement advice, to OECD governments on how to restore trust in public institutions. As well, Goal 16 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) endorsed in 2015 by all UN member countries (“Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable, and inclusive institutions at all levels”) focuses on trust and governance. And the UN Statistical Commission has set up a dedicated group (the Praia Group) to develop a handbook on governance statistics to inform and monitor the SDG targets under Goal 16. With some notable exceptions, the measurement of trust does not have a long tradition, particularly within official statistics, and official measures that exist are not always collected in a regular and internationally comparable manner. These Guidelines aim at contributing to filling this gap. Their main objective is to support data producers in their own initiatives to measuring trust. In particular, the Guidelines will provide direct inputs to the UN Praia Group. They synthesize what we currently know about good practice on how trust can, and should, be measured. This knowledge might change as the evidence base on trust develops. However, especially so for measures of interpersonal trust, there is already today good evidence that the suggested survey questions produce valid data and are ready to be included in official surveys. OECD GUIDELINES ON MEASURING TRUST © OECD 2017 3 FOREWORD It is my hope that these Guidelines will contribute to a step change in the quality and availability of trust data going forward. Martine Durand OECD Chief Statistician Director of the OECD Statistics Directorate 4 OECD GUIDELINES ON MEASURING TRUST © OECD 2017 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Acknowledgements This report is published under the responsibility of the Secretary-General of the OECD. The opinions expressed and arguments employed herein do not necessarily reflect the official views of the Organisation or of the governments of its member countries. These Guidelines were produced as part of the work programme of the OECD Statistics Committee and the Public Governance Committee, whose delegates have reviewed the report. The report was prepared by Conal Smith and Lara Fleischer from the OECD Statistics Directorate. An advisory group composed of representatives from national statistical offices of OECD member countries (Adrian Franco, INEGI, Mexico; Sophie Pontieux, INSEE, France; Dawn Snape and Veronique Siegler, ONS, UK; Fiona Carnes and Joanne Baker, ABS, Australia), and researchers and policy makers (Prof. Soonhee Kim and Prof. Dong-Young Kim, Korea Development Institute; Prof. Jacob S. Hacker, Yale University; Prof. Yann Algan, Paris Institute of Political Studies; Dr. Monica Ferrin, University of Turin; Jacob Saeger, UK Cabinet Strategy Office; Prof. Marc Hetherington, Vanderbilt University; Prof. Eugene Kandel, Hebrew University of Jerusalem and former Chairman of the Israeli National Economic Council) provided very valuable comments and advice on the drafting of the report. The report also benefited from the comments of Martine Durand, Marco Mira d’Ercole, Carrie Exton and Fabrice Murtin (OECD Statistics Directorate), as well as Rolf Alter, Zsuzsanna Lonti, Paloma Baena Olabe and Santiago Gonzalez (OECD Directorate for Public Governance). Patrick Hamm, Anne-Lise Faron and Virginie Elgrably ensured the final editing of the document. OECD GUIDELINES ON MEASURING TRUST © OECD 2017 5 TABLE OF CONTENTS Table of contents Executive summary ......................................................... 11 Overview and recommendations ............................................. 15 1. Concept and validity................................................... 16 2. Methodological considerations in the measurement of trust ................ 17 3. Measuring trust ....................................................... 19 4. Output and analysis of trust data........................................ 23 5.Nextsteps........................................................... 24 Chapter 1. Introduction....................................................... 25 1.1. Introduction ........................................................ 26 1.2. Motivation.......................................................... 26 1.3. The Guidelines for measuring trust .................................... 29 1.4. Conclusion ......................................................... 32 Notes.................................................................. 32 References ............................................................. 32 Chapter 2. Concept and validity ............................................... 35 2.1. Introduction ........................................................ 36 2.2. A conceptual framework for measuring trust ............................ 36 2.3. Approaches to measuring trust ........................................ 43 2.4. The statistical quality of trust measures ................................ 47 2.5. Conclusion ......................................................... 78 Notes.................................................................. 79 References ............................................................. 80 Chapter 3. Methodological considerations ...................................... 85 3.1. Introduction ........................................................ 86 3.2. Measurement error .................................................. 86 3.3. Question wording.................................................... 87 3.4. Response formats ................................................... 94 3.5. Survey context ...................................................... 98 3.6. Survey mode ........................................................ 101 3.7. Response styles and the cultural