Development and validation of the Trust in Government measure (TGM)

BMC Public Health

Research

Patrick Brown¹  Michael Calnan²  Jerrica Little³  Helena Godinho Nascimento³  Samantha B. Meyer³  Kathleen E. Burns³  Christopher M. Perlman³  Paul R. Ward³  Gustavo S. Betini³ 

[1] Department of Sociology, University of Amsterdam, 1012 WX, Amsterdam, Netherlands;School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research, University of Kent, CT2 7NB, Canterbury, UK;Research Centre for Public Health, Equity and Human Flourishing, Torrens University, 88 Wakefield St, 5000, Adelaide, SA, Australia;School of Public Health Sciences, University of Waterloo, 200 University Ave West, N2L 3G1, Waterloo, ON, Canada;

关键词: Trust;    OECD;    Measure;    Federal;    Government;    Validation;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s12889-023-16974-0

 received in 2023-07-05, accepted in 2023-10-12,  发布年份 2023

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundTrust in government is associated with health behaviours and is an important consideration in population health interventions. While there is a reported decline in public trust in government across OECD countries, the tools used to measure trust are limited in their use for informing action to (re)build trust, and have limitations related to reliability and validity. To address the limitations of existing measures available to track public trust, the aim of the present work was to develop a new measure of trust in government.MethodsFifty-six qualitative interviews (Aug-Oct 2021; oversampling for equity-deserving populations) were conducted to design a national survey, including factor analyses and validation testing (N = 878; June 1-14th 2022) in Canada.ResultsThe measure demonstrated strong internal consistency (α = 0.96) and test validity (CFI = 0.96, RMSEA = 0.09, SRMR = 0.03), suggesting that trust in government can be measured as a single underlying construct. It also demonstrated strong criterion validity, as measured by significant (p < 0.0001) associations of scores with vaccine hesitancy, vaccine conspiracy beliefs, COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs, trust in public health messaging about COVID-19, and trust in public health advice about COVID-19. We present the Trust in Government Measure (TGM); a 13-item unidimensional measure of trust in Federal government.ConclusionsThis measure can be used within high-income countries, particularly member countries within the OECD already in support of using tools to collect, publish and compare statistics. Our measure should be used by researchers and policy makers to measure trust in government as a key indicator of societal and public health.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© BioMed Central Ltd., part of Springer Nature 2023

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