Focus area 03
Research on public trust examines how confidence in institutions such as government, media, science, and the courts is measured through surveys, how those measures differ, and what patterns they show across countries and over time.
“Trust in institutions is collapsing” is one of the most repeated claims in public debate — and one of the least examined. Different surveys ask different questions, on different scales, of different populations, and they do not always agree.
This programme documents the major trust surveys, their methodological differences, and the findings that are robust across sources, separating durable patterns from artefacts of question wording.
Review
A review of the major surveys that measure trust in government, media and science, the findings that hold up across sources, and the methodological traps that produce misleading headlines.
Explainer
Where the idea came from, what counts as evidence, the institutions built around it, and the honest limits of letting evidence guide public decisions.
Insight
Open publication makes verification and reuse possible — but openness alone guarantees neither quality nor privacy nor use.