A Step toward Understanding Trust in the Government

Authors

Ted Delicath '13, Illinois Wesleyan UniversityFollow

Abstract

Over the last fifty years, trust in government has declined. This paper seeks to further the understanding of trust in government. Using ordinal level survey data from 1998-2012, a crosstabular analysis is used to test governmental trust with broad and specific policy areas. This research challenges part ofPopkin and Dimock’s (2000) research, which asserts that citizens use trust as a heuristic for both broad and specific questions about the government. The empirical findings suggest that citizens distrust the government broadly but trust a wide range of programs implemented by the very government they distrust.

Recommended Citation

Delicath, Ted '13 (2013) "A Step toward Understanding Trust in the Government," Res Publica - Journal of Undergraduate Research: Vol. 18
Available at: https://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/respublica/vol18/iss1/11