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8/10/2019 (1983) the Measurement and Meaning of Trust in Government
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Society for Political ethodology
The Measurement and Meaning of Trust in GovernmentAuthor(s): Stanley FeldmanSource: Political Methodology, Vol. 9, No. 3 (1983), pp. 341-354Published by: Oxford University Presson behalf of the Society for Political Methodology
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8/10/2019 (1983) the Measurement and Meaning of Trust in Government
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The
Measurement
and
Meaning
of
Trust
in
Government
Stanley
Feldman
Perhaps
the
most well documented
trend In
political
attitudes
over
the
past
20
years
has
been
the
sharp
increase
in
political
cynicism.
Research
in
the
1950s
and
early
1960s
found
Americans
loyal
and
highly
trusting
of
political
authorities
(Almond and
Verba,
1963;
Lane,
1965). Since
the
mid-1960s,
a
large
number of
studies
using
a
number of
different
indicators
have
shown
substantial
declines
in
political
trust,
confidence,
and
public
evaluations
of
both
political and nonpolitical Institutions and leaders (Miller,
1974a;
Hill
and
Luttbeg,
1980;
Ladd,
1976-77;
House and
Mason,
1975;
Wright,
1976).
Despite
the
large body
of
evi
dence
on
the
decline
of
political
trust,
major
questions
still
remain about
the
meaning,
causes,
and
consequences
of
the
observed
trends.
Although
the
significance
of these
trends
in
political
attitudes remains
unclear,
a
major
issue
that
needs
to be
addressed is
the
meaning
of
responses
to the
items used
to document
these trends.
A good example of the problems surrounding the meaning
of such
social and
political
indicators
is
the
popular
trust
in-government
scale that has
been
included in
a
long
series
of
SRC/CPS
National Election
surveys.
These
items
have
become
popular
measures
of
political
trust/cynicism
and
have
been
Included In
other
large-scale
surveys,
but
consid
erable
conflict has
developed
over
their
precise
meaning.
The
interpretation
issue
revolves around
the
problem
of
diffuse
support
(Easton,
1975):
general feelings
of
alle
giance
and
support
for
the
political regime.
Miller
(1974a,
1974b)
made the case most
strongly
for
interpreting
the
AUTHOR'S NOTE:
The
data used
in this
analysis
were
collected
by
the
Center for
Political
Studies
and
made available
by
the
Interuniversity
Consortium for Political
and Social
Research,
neither
of
which bears
any
responsibility
for
the
results
or
interpretations
reported
here.
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8/10/2019 (1983) the Measurement and Meaning of Trust in Government
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342
Political
Methodology
political
trust
items
as
measures
of
diffuse
support,
arguing
that mistrust
is in
large
part
a
consequence
of
fundamental
social and political conflict and has potentially significant
consequences
for
the
political
system.
Miller,
Goldenberg,
and
Erbring
(1979:79)
have
more
recently
argued
that
cynicism
reflects
general
dissatisfaction with
government
perfor
mance
and
may
be considered
a
'leading*
Indicator of
dif
fuse
support.
An
alternative
interpretation
is that
the
trust-in
government
items,
because of their
reference to the
govern
ment in
Washington
and
the
people
in
Washington,
tend
to
reflect attitudes toward the incumbent authorities rather
than
toward the
political
system
more
generally.
Citrin
(1974)
argued
for
the
latter
interpretation,
in
part
because
he
found that
expressions
of
cynicism
were
often
accompanied
by feelings
of
pride
in
the
political
system.
Muller
and
Jukam's
(1977)
data
from
a
German
survey
show
a
clear dis
tinction
between
attitudes
toward
political
incumbents
and
toward the
political
system.
They
argue
that
political
trust
is
more
related
to incumbent affect than to
system
support.
Most
recently, Muller, Jukam,
and
Seligson
(1982)
have
shown
that
the
political
trust
measure
does
not
relate
to
anti-system
behavior
in
the
way
that
a
measure
of
diffuse
political
support
should.
The
key
issue in this debate
is
the
seemingly
ambiguous
meaning
of
government
in
the
trust
items:
do
people
interpret
this to
mean
the
specific
leaders
in
power
at
the
time
or
the
more
established
governmental
institutions
from
which
long-term
legitimacy
derives
(Hill,
1981)?
One
data set
may
offer
some
answers
to
this
question.
In the 1978 National Election study, four new questions were
included with
the
five
trust-in-government questions.
Using
the
same
wording
as
the
do-what-is-right
and
few
big
interests
items
of
the
trust-in-government
scale,
two items
were
changed
to
refer to President
Carter
and the
Carter
administration,
while
two others
specify
the
U.S.
Congress.
(See
the
appendix
for the
wording
of these
questions.)
The
more
specific
referents
of
these
questions
make it
possible
to examine the
relationship
between
the
general
trust items
and trust in both the President and Congress, and thus to
gain
a
better
understanding
of
the
meaning
of trust
in
gov
ernment.
Two
problems
stand in
the
way
of
a
simple
Interpretation
of
the
relationships
among
the
three
sets
of
trust
items,
however.
First,
as
Abramson
and Finifter
(1981)
recognized
in their
analysis
of
these
data,
the
use
of
identical
ques
tion
wording
across
the
three
referents introduces
the
possibility
of
contamination
because of
common
methods
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8/10/2019 (1983) the Measurement and Meaning of Trust in Government
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Stanley
Feldman
343
variance.
Thus,
a
correlation
between, say,
trust
in
govern
ment
and
trust
in
Congress
could reflect
the
covariance
gen
erated by people reacting to the common question wording.
Abramson and
Finifter's (1981)
analysis
of
these
items
showed
that
common
method
variance
is
a
potential
problem,
at least
for the
few-big-interests questions.
Even with
this
source
of
bias
recognized,
however,
Abramson and
Finifter
found
substantial
relationships
between
the
original
trust
measure
and
the
new
measures
of
trust in Carter
and
Congress.
Despite
their
awareness
of
the
question
wording
problem
and
their
careful
attempts
to
deal with
it,
their
methods
(examining
the
effects
of
dropping
items
from
scales
while
correcting
for
changes
in scale
reliability)
fall
short in
two
respects:
they
are
able to detect
only
quite
large
methods effects
and
they
cannot
accurately
estimate either
the
magnitude
of
those
effects
or
the true
correlations
among
the
trust
measures
with methods effects
removed.
In
addition,
any
analysis
that
attempts
to
estimate
unbiased
parameters
among
attitudinal constructs must take into
account both
systematic
and
random
error
components
in
the
measured
variables
(Blalock,
1968).
The second problem that must be dealt with before these
new
trust items
can
be
used
to
assess
the
meaning
of
the
trust-in-government
scale
is
the
causal
nature
of
the
observed
relationships.
Plausible theoretical
arguments
can
be
used to
defend
three different
interpretations
of
a
correlation between
the
general
trust
scale and trust in
Carter
or
Congress.
First,
as
Miller
(1979)
argues,
there
may
be
a
spillover
effect
in which
general
distrust of
political
authorities results
in
increasing
distrust
of
the
specific institutions of the government or the occupants of
those
institutions.
Alternatively,
the
direction
of
causal
influence
could
be
reversed,
with
generalized
distrust
of
political
authorities
being
a
consequence
of
distrust
of
the
President
and
Congress:
distrust of
the
major
political
institutions
and
incumbents
builds
up
and
leads
to
a
more
diffuse
sense
of
distrust
of
politics
and
the
political
system.
Another,
less
substantive,
interpretation
of this
causal flow is
that,
when
asked
about trust
in
government
or
the
people
in
Washington, people respond
on
the
basis
of
the
most
salient
features
of
the
national
government:
the
President
and
Congress.
Finally,
observed
correlations
among
the
several
trust
measures
could
simply
be
spurious.
Feelings
that
the
government
has
not
solved
important prob
lems
or
is
generally
unresponsive
to
people's
opinions
may
lead
to
distrust
of
various
aspects
of
the
government
simul
taneously.
Thus,
correlations
among
the three
measures
of
political
trust
do
not
necessarily
demonstrate
direct
causal
relationships
among
them.
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8/10/2019 (1983) the Measurement and Meaning of Trust in Government
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Political
Methodology
In
this
paper,
I
estimate
more
precisely
the
relation
ships
between
the
general
trust
in
government
items and the
new
items
measuring
trust in
President Carter
and the
Con
gress.
Only
by
dealing
with the issues of
systematic
and
random measurement
error
and
the
structure
of causal
effects
can
the
new
trust
items
provide
useful information
for
understanding
the
meaning
and
significance
of
political
trust.
DATA AND METHODS
This
paper
uses
the
same 1978
CPS
National Election
Data employed
by
Abramson and Finifter (1981). As noted
earlier,
in
addition
to
the
standard five
trust
items,
four
new
items
were
included.
The
new
items
duplicate
the
word
ing
of
two
of
the
standard
items,
changing
the
referents
first
to
President Carter
and
the Carter
administration
and
then to the
Congress.
Because
the
other
three
trust
items
were
not
repeated
in
the
new
form,
they
will
not be
included
in this
analysis:
question wording
effects
cannot
be
estimated
with
a
single
item.
The
analysis
will
thus
consider the relationships among six trust items represent
ing
three
substantive
constructs (trust in
government,
Carter,
and
Congress)
and
two methods effects
(question
wording).
The
hypothesized
model
underlying
these six
items
is
shown
in
Figure
1.
In
this
model,
the measured
variables
are
enclosed in
rectangles
and
the
unobserved
constructs in
circles.
Variation in
each
item
may
result
from
three
dis
tinct
influences:
a
substantive factor
representing
the
specific
dimension
of
political
trust
(government, Carter,
and
Congress),
a
question wording
effect,
or a
random
error
term.
The
estimates
of
the
correlations
among
the three
trust factors
are
thus free of
the
effects of
both
system
atic and random
measurement
error.
In addition to
the
mea
surement model shown in
Figure
1,
six
exogenous
variables
were
included
in
the
analysis
as
predictors
of
the
three
trust
factors. This
was
done
both to
aid in
the
identifica
tion
of
the
model and to
provide
evidence
of discriminant
validity
among
the
three
estimated factors.
The six
vari
ables are:
respondents'
ratings
of the
job
performance
of
Carter and
Congress, approval
of
the
government's
handling
of
the
economy
and
the
respondents'
self-identIfied
most
important
problem,
an
index
of
government responsiveness,
and
party
identification.1
The
entire
model,
with
the
six
trust
indicators and
six
exogenous
variables,
was
estimated
using
LISREL
(Joreskog
and
Sorbom,
1978),
which
provides
fuI
I-Information,
maximum
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8/10/2019 (1983) the Measurement and Meaning of Trust in Government
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Figure.actortructurefheoliticalrusttems
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346
Political
Methodology
likelihood
estimates for identified
models with
unobserved
constructs.
Two
means
are
provided
for
assessing
goodness
of-fit:
standard
errors
of
the
parameter
estimates
and
the
likelihood ratio
value.
The
standard
errors can
be used to
compute
t-values and
test each
parameter
for
statistical
significance.
In
large
samples,
the
likelihood ratio value
is
distributed
as
a
chi-square
distribution
and
provides
a
goodness-of-fit
test
for
the
entire
model.
In
contrast
to
most
inferential
statistics,
a
large chi-square
value indi
cates
that
the
model
does
not
fit
the
data.
One
drawback
of
this
test is
that the
likelihood
ratio
value
is
a
direct
function
of
sample
size,
making
it
unlikely
that
any
non
trivial model will
produce
a small
chi-square
value with a
data
set
from
a
large
sample.
In
this
case,
a
more
useful
strategy
is
to examine
the
chi-square
to
degrees
of
freedom
ratio. As
a
rough
guide,
ratios
of
under
five
are
consid
ered
evidence
of
good
fit
for
a
sample
of
the
size used
here.
RESULTS
Table 1 provides the LISREL estimate of the basic mea
surement
model
and
the
effects
of
the
six
exogenous
varia
bles
on
the
three trust constructs.
All
coefficients
have
been
standardized.
The
chi-square/degrees
of
freedom
ratio
is
3.58,
a
very
good
fit for
a
sample
size
of
over
2000.2
The
estimates
show,
first,
that
in
all
three
cases
the
two
items
are
equally
good
indicators of
political
trust.
On
the
other
hand,
in
all
six
cases
question
wording
effects
and
random
error
account
for
more
than
half
of
the
variance
in
the
indicator.
On
the
average,
the
underlying
trust
construct
determines
only
42
percent
of
the variance
in
these
indicators.
It
is
thus
clear
that
any
estimates
of
the
relationships
among
the
three trust
measures
will be
badly
biased
unless both
sources
of
error
variance
are
con
trol
led for.
As
Abramson
and Finifter
concluded,
the
impact
of
question wording
varies
significantly
across
the
items,
allowing
us
to
see
more
precisely
how each of
the
six
trust
items is
affected
by
response
to
question wording.
The
estimates show a substantial and consistent
question
word
ing
effect
for
the
few-big-interests questions.
These
large
effects
are
consistent
with
Abramson
and
Finifterfs
finding
of
response
set
effects
for
these items.
The three
do-what-is-right
items
are
not
completely
free of
question
wording
effects,
however. For two
forms of this
item,
the
government
and
Carter,
the
question
wording
effect
is
slight
and thus results
in
little
correlation
between
pairs
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8/10/2019 (1983) the Measurement and Meaning of Trust in Government
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347
TABLE
1
PARAMETER ESTIMATES OF
THE POLITICAL
TRUST MODEL
A:
Estimates of
the
Measurement
Model
Trust Factors
Indicator
Government?
Do
what is
right
Government?
Few
big interests
Carter?Do
what is
right
Carter?Few
big
Interests
Congress?Do
what is
right
Congress^?Few
big interests
Govern
ment
.66
Wording
Factors
Do what
Few
big
Carter
Congress
is
right
Interests
Error
,63
.66
.65
.67
.68
.20
.21
.51
.42
.42
,52
.53
.41
.52
.40
.30
.26
Note:
All
coefficients
are
significant
at
the
.01 level.
B:
Impact
of
Exogenous
Variables
on
Trust Factor
_Exogenous
Variables_
Trust
Factor
Rating
Rating
of of
Carter
Congress
Economy
Government
.09**
.17** .16**
Carter
.48**
-.01
.06*
Congress
.06 .3.5** .12**
*
=
significant
at
the
.05
level.
**
=
significant
at
the .01
level.
chi-square
=64.5
degrees
of
freedom
=
18
chisquare/df
=
3.58
Most
Handling
Important
Prob
I m
Government
Party
.15**
.15**
.13**
Responsiveness
I
enti
f
icat
ion
.34**
-.05
.30**
.06*
.38**
-.04
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8/10/2019 (1983) the Measurement and Meaning of Trust in Government
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8/10/2019 (1983) the Measurement and Meaning of Trust in Government
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349
both
trust
in
Carter
and trust
In
Congress.
The
newly
specified
model
was
estimated
with the
LISREL
program.
The
fit
of this
model
is somewhat
better
than
the
first, reflect
ing
the
elimination of
nonsignificant
causal
paths
between
the
exogenous
variables and the
three
trust
constructs
(chi
square/df
=
3.35).
The
estimates of
the
measurement
compo
nent
of
the
model
remained
virtually
unchanged.
The
esti
mates
for
the
three
trust constructs
are
(all
coefficients
are
significant
at
the
.05
level):
TRUST
IN
GOVERNMENT
=
.53TRUST IN
CONGRESS
+ .20TRUST IN CARTER + .11 GOVERNMENT
HANDLING
OF
ECONOMY
+
.09RESP0NSIVENESS
-.08PARTY
IDENTIFICATION
TRUST IN CARTER
=
.17TRUST IN GOVERNMENT
+.46RATING
OF
CARTER
+
.15M0ST
IMPORTANT
PROBLEM
+
.24RESP0NSIVENESS
+
.09PARTY
IDENTIFICATION
TRUST IN CONGRESS
=
.18TRUST
IN
GOVERNMENT
+
.31
RATING OF CONGRESS
+
.09G0VERNMENT
HANDLING OF ECONOMY
+
.13M0ST IMPORTANT
PROBLEM
+
.31
RESPONSIVENESS
Looking
first
at
the
determinants
of
trust
in
govern
ment,
we
see
that the
dominant influence
is
trust
in
Congress.
The
standardized coefficient
for this
construct
is
more
than
two and
a
half
times
larger
than
the
next
largest
coefficient,
for
trust
in Carter. With trust
in
Congress
and Carter
held
constant,
the
government's handling
of the
economy,
govern
ment
responsiveness,
and
party
identification have
only
marginal
effects
on
trust
in
government.
It
seems
clear,
then,
that
when
people
are
asked to
express
their level of
trust in
the
federal
government they
are
responding primarily
on
the
basis of
their
trust in
Congress.
Trust in Carter
and
Congress,
on
the other
hand,
are
only
somewhat
influenced
by
trust
in
government
more
gener
ally.
Although
there is
some
tendency
for
distrust
to
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8/10/2019 (1983) the Measurement and Meaning of Trust in Government
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350
Political
Methodology
spill
over
from
the
government
to
the
institutions
of
government,
the
effect
is
not
nearly
as
pronounced
as
the
effect of trust in Congress on trust in government. Beyond
this,
the
determinants of
trust in Carter and
Congress
are
very
similar to the
previous
analysis.
Specifically,
trust
in
Carter
is
more
responsive
to
job performance
ratings
than is
trust
in
Congress
(.46
vs.
.31),
while
the
reverse
is
true
of the
impact
of
government
responsiveness
(.31
vs.
.24).
CONCLUSIONS
Although
this
analysis
cannot
answer
all the
questions
relevant
to
the
meaning
of
trust
in
government,
some
impor
tant conclusions
can
be drawn.
First,
the
analysis
has
shown
very
clearly
that
at least two of
the
items
(and
pre
sumably
all)
making
up
the
popular
trust-in-government
scale
are
contaminated
by
both
random and
systematic
(question
wording)
measurement
error.
Overall,
more
than half
of
the
variance
in the
items reflects
sources
of
error
rather
than
the
substantive
underlying
construct of
political
trust.
Second,
the effects of
question wording
are
quite
evident,
especially
for
the
few-big-interests
questions.
Thus,
for
this
question,
and
to
a
somewhat
lesser
extent the
do-what
is-right
items,
people's
responses
reflect not
only
their
feelings
of trust but
also
their
tendency
to
respond
in
consistent
ways
to
certain
types
of
questions.
As Abramson
and
Finifter (1981)
recognized,
this
is
clearly
a
problem
when the
referents
of
the
trust-in-government
scale
are
changed.
Some
of
the
observed
covariation
will
be
a
result
of methods variance rather than substantive relationships.
Third,
although question
wording
inflates
the
correla
tions
between
the
trust
constructs,
random
measurement
sig
nificantly
depresses
them. Estimated
correlations
among
the
three,
controlling
for both
sources
of
error,
are
very
large,
especially
between trust
in
government
and
trust
in
Congress.
These
correlations
suggest
that either members
of
the
public
do not
distinguish
clearly
between
the
gov
ernment,
the
incumbent
President,
and
the
Congress
in
their
feelings of trust or cynicism, or that the sources of mis
trust in
all
three
are
quite
similar.
Fourth,
estimates
from
a
nonrecursive
model
show that
the
dominant
causal
relationship
underlying
these
correla
tions is
the
effect
of
trust in
Congress
oni
trust
in
govern
ment.
The
other
three
causal
relationships
(trust
in
Carter
on
government,
and
trust in
government
on
the other
two),
while
statistically significant,
are
much
less
important
than the
first.
Thus,
when
people report
that
they
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8/10/2019 (1983) the Measurement and Meaning of Trust in Government
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Stanley
Feldman
351
(mis)trust
the
government,
they
are
in
large
measure
saying
that
they
(mis)trust
Congress.
Finally,
there is also
some
evidence that trust in the President is based more on the
job
performance
of
the
incumbent,
while
trust
in
Congress
is
more
institutionally
based
(as
reflected
in
perceptions
of
responsiveness).
What does all
of
this
mean
for
the
interpretation
of
the
trust-in-government
scale?
Clearly,
the
key
finding
is
the
strong
causal
link
between trust
in
Congress
and
trust
in
government.
An
initial
question
asks
why
this relation
ship
is
so
much
stronger
than
that of
trust
in
Carter
on
trust
in
government.
One
plausible
answer
is
that both
the
government
and
Congress
are
understood
by
the
public
in
institutional
terms,
while
the
reference
to
President
Carter
is in
very
personal
terms.
Thus,
it
is
easier
to
separate
evaluations
of
the
President
from
the
institutions
of
the
government.
This still
leaves
the
problem
of how
to
inter
pret
the
impact
of
trust
in
Congress
on
trust
in
government.
On
the
one
hand,
this
may
indicate
the
operation
of
a
process
by
which
people develop
trust
(or
cynicism)
in
the
government
as a
whole
on
the
basis
of
their
evaluations
of the
perfor
mance of
specific
governmental
institutions (Miller, 1979).
However,
an
alternative
explanation
is
that,
when
asked
to
express
their trust
in
government,
people
respond
on
the
basis
of
particularly
salient
information,
in
this
case
on
the
basis
of
their
evaluation
of
Congress
(Hill,
1981).
This
linkage
may
be
created
in
large
part
by people's
eval
uations of
Congress
as an
institution.
Evidence
shows
that
people
clearly
distinguish
between
evaluations
of Con
gress
and evaluations
of
their
own
representative.
If
this
explanation is correct, it suggests that the trust-in
government
scale
may
not
be
measuring
actual
levels
of
support
for
the
political regime,
but
may
reflect
evalua
tions of
specific
governmental
institutions.
The
data
in
this
analysis
cannot
distinguish
between
these
two
explana
tions;
this should
be
a
primary
goal
of
future
research.
APPENDIX
The following are the six political trust
items
used
in
the
analysis
reported
here.
Trust in
government:
How
much
of
the time do
you
think
you
can
trust
the
government
in
Washington
to do what
is
right?just
about
always,
most
of
the
time,
or
only
some
of
the time?
Would
you
say
the
government
is
pretty
much
run
by
a
few
big
interests
looking
out
for
themselves
or
that
it is
run
for
the
benefit
of
a
I
I the
people?
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8/10/2019 (1983) the Measurement and Meaning of Trust in Government
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352
Political
Methodology
Trust in Carter:
How much
of the
time
do
you
think
you
can
trust
President Carter to do what is right?just about always,
most of
the
time,
or
only
some
of
the
time?
Would
you
say
that
the
Carter administration is
pretty
much
run
by
a
few
big
interests
looking
out for
themselves
or
that
it
is
run
for the
benefit
of all
the
people?
Trust in
Congress:
How
much
of
the
time do
you
think
you
can
trust
the
U.S.
Congress
to do
what
is
right?just
about
always,
most
of the time, or only some of the time?
Would
you
say
that
the
U.S.
Congress
is
pretty
much
run
by
a
few
big
interests
looking
out for
themselves
or
that it is
run
for
the
benefit
of
all the
people?
NOTES
1.
Evaluations of
the
job
performance
of President
Carter
and
the
Congress
were
obtained
from
five-point
scales,
from
very
good
to
very
poor.
Approval
of
the
government's
handling
of the
economy
was constructed from
separate
ques
tions
dealing
with
unemployment
and inflation.
Those items
and
one
measuring
approval
of the
government's
handling
of
the
respondents'
most
important problem
had
response
alternatives
of
good
job, only
fair,
and
poor
job.
The
government
responsiveness
scale
was
constructed
from
three
items
asking
whether
the
government
pays
attention
to
what
people
think;
whether
parties
make
the
government
listen;
and whether elections make
the
government
listen.
High scores indicate high trust, approval of government
performance,
government
responsiveness,
and Democratic
party
identification.
2. To
minimize
the
problem
of
shrinking sample
size,
pairwise
deletion of
missing
values
was
employed
in
the
calculation
of the
correlation
matrix.
There
were
only
minor differences
between this matrix and
one
based
on
listwise
deletion of
missing
values.
3.
It
is
possible
that the
two
question wording
fac
tors
also
tap
a more
general
level
of
political
trust in
addition to methods
variance.
Two
pieces
of
evidence
sug
gest
that
this is
unlikely.
First,
there
is
virtually
no
correlation
between
the
two factors.
Second,
there
is
no
indication
that the
exogenous
variables
have
any
effect
on
the
do-what-is-right
factor,
while
they
may
have
a
slight
impact
on
the
few-big-interests
factor.
This line
of
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8/10/2019 (1983) the Measurement and Meaning of Trust in Government
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Stanley
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353
analysis
cannot
be
pursued
too
far,
however,
because of
identification
problems.
4. To
Identify
the
model,
certain
exogenous
variables
were
excluded
from
each
equation.
These
deletions reflect
both
substantive
considerations
(i.e.,
no
direct
effect
of
ratings
of
Carter
on
trust
in
Congress,
and
no
direct
con
nection
between trust
in
Congress
and
trust in
Carter) and
inspection
of
the
estimates
from
the
initial model.
Finally,
all
nonsignificant
terms
were
dropped
from
the
equations
and
the
model
was
reestimated. Several other
specifications
were
tried and
the
estimates of the
relationships
among
the
trust factors
proved
to be
very
robust.
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