Markus Freitag & Paul C. Bauer - PowerPoint Presentation

Slide1

Markus Freitag & Paul C. BauerUniversity of KonstanzDepartment of Politics & Management

University of Zürich, 16th of July 2011

Dimensions of trust

Research question and relevance

Dimensions of social trustData and

operationalizationMethodological approachEmpirical resultsConclusions

Outline

Which

distinct dimensions of social trust can we identify, both theoretically as well as empirically and to what extent are these dimensions equivalent cross-culturally?

Research question

Relevance of research question

Increasing popularity of “trust” was not paralleled by an increase in conceptual clarity

Trust is the “belief that others, through their action or inaction, will contribute to my/our well-being and refrain from inflicting damage upon me/us.” (Offe 1999: 47)Disagreement among scholars with regard to the number of dimensions of social trustDo respondents understand trust questions differently in different cultural contexts?

Trust as a

one-dimensional constructTrust

in people we know and trust in people we do not know form a single dimension due to the fact that the latter arises as an externality from the formerTrust as a two-dimensional

construct

Particularized trust

Trust toward personally known people

Generalized trust

Trust toward people

beyond immediate familiarity (unknown people, strangers, random people one meets on the street)

Dimensions of

s

ocial

t

rust

Trust as a

three-dimensional construct Particularized trust

Generalized trustIdentity-based trustBased on identification and categorizationIdentities/categories may refer to behavioral similarities, ethnicity, or traditions (e.g. nationality, religion)

Dimensions of

s

ocial

t

rust

Item

Question wording

Trust in most people

Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted, or that you can't be too careful in dealing with people? If we take a scale on which 0 means that you can't be too careful in dealing with people and 10 means that most people can be trusted, where would you locate yourself on this scale

?

Trust in people one meets for the first time

And what does it look like for certain groups of persons. If you take again the scale from 0 to 10, on which 0 means „no trust at all“ and 10 „a lot of trust“, how great is your trust in

persons

that you meet for the first time?

Trust in friends

…in

your

friends?

Trust in neighbors

…in your neighbors?Trust in people of other religion…in persons of another religion?Trust in people of other nationality…in persons of another nationality?

Data: Survey “Volunteering in Swiss Municipalities” (2010); 4955 respondents in Switzerland

Data and

operationalization

Model 1

Model 2a

Model 2b

Model 3

Empirical analysis: Part I – CFA x 4

Multiple-group confirmatory factor analysis (

MGCFA

)Test the 3-factor model in population subgroupsSubgroups: Individuals belonging to German-, French- and Italian-speaking regions Levels of invariance

Configural

invariance

Metric invariance

Scalar invariance

Empirical analysis: Part II - MGCFA

Empirical results: Dimensionality of social trust

Cut-off

values indicating good model fit (Brown 2006): RMSEA < 0.08; SRMR < 0.06; TLI > 0.95; CFI > 0.95Model 1, 2a and 2b display rather poor fit; Model 3 fares comparably betterParticularized, identity-based, and generalized trust emerge as three distinct constructs

Model (N=4289)

Chi-

Squared

Df

SRMR

RMSEA

TLI

CFI

AIC

1:

One

dimension271.4690.0410.0820.8840.930

995422a:

Two

dimensions

185.58

8

0.033

0.072

0.911

0.953

99381

2b:

Two

dimensions

225.56

8

0.040

0.080

0.891

0.942

99456

3:

Three

dimensions

24.71

6

0.012

0.027

0.988

0.995

99096

Empirical results: MGCFA – Model 3

χ2

Df

P-value

RMSEA

∆RMSEA

CFI

∆CFI

TLI

SRMR

Single Group Solutions

German-speaking

Switzerland (n=3307)

18.83

6

0.004

0.025

0.988

0.013

French-speaking

Switzerland (n=835)

9.11

6

0.168

0.025

0.997

0.992

0.013

Italian-speaking

Switzerland (n=147)

2.30

60.8900.0001.0001.0810.020 Measurement InvarianceConfigural Invariance29.43180.0430.0210.9970.9920.013Metric Invariance36.09240.0540.019-0.0020.9970.0000.9940.016Scalar Invariance62.72300.0000.0280.0070.991-0.0060.9870.020

Cut-off

values indicating good

model fit (Chen 2007):

Change of CFI lower than ≤.005

Change of RMSEA lower than ≤ .010

Conclusions

Particularized, identity-based, and generalized trust emerge as three distinct constructs in our analysis and the theoretically assumed three-dimensionality of social trust is reflected by empirical data

It is possible to compare means of the latent constructs particularized, identity-based, and generalized trust between the three Suisse cultural regions investigated here

Since our analysis was conducted with the “special case” Switzerland we have reason to believe that the results yielded in our analysis might be true for other European countries as well

Thank you very much!