Title Advancing Trust Research: Linking Conceptual Definitions, Standard Measures and Perceptions of Social Actors /
Translation of Title Pasitikėjimo tyrimų plėtojimas: sąsaja tarp konceptualių apibrėžimų, standartinių matavimo priemonių ir socialinių veikėjų sampratų.
Authors Gaižauskaitė, Inga
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Keywords [eng] trust ; democracy ; measurement ; methodology ; qualitative research
Abstract [eng] This doctoral dissertation explores methodological issues of trust research in the context of democracy. Trust is considered a necessary social resource in complex modern societies. The literature emphasises the importance of trust for the functioning of a democratic system, while at the same time observing for decades the lack of trust in people and/or institutions in some democracies. While the concept of trust is described as multidimensional and a variety of methods can be used to research trust, studies focusing on the levels of trust in democratic societies have typically relied on survey-type measures of trust. Two main forms of trust (social generalised trust and trust in political institutions) and corresponding standard measures dominate. These measures have remained almost unchanged since the development of national and international comparative research programmes starting around 1950. This dissertation contributes to the efforts of other authors to critically assess the methodological validity of these standard measures of trust and the extent to which there is a consistent transfer from the conceptualisation of trust to its operationalisation and interpretation in the researched social reality. Without discounting the value of the quantitative data that has been accumulated over decade, it is observed that the existing standard measures of trust only partially meet the methodological requirements of good (valid and reliable) measures, thus there is a need to look for alternatives or to adjust existing measures to consistently meet the framework of a particular theoretical approach and to assure that there is good correspondence between interpretations of the social actors (the potential respondents) and interpretations intended by the researchers. Moreover, a more extensive application of qualitative methodology to research trust in the context of democracy can both contribute to a deeper understanding of the phenomenon of trust and the advancement of quantitative trust measures.
Dissertation Institution Lietuvos socialinių mokslų centras.
Type Doctoral thesis
Language English
Publication date 2022