Content Validity of the Standard Trust Variable

The paper critically revises the most often applied survey tool of trust measurement, the so-called standard trust variable. The critical approach is focused on the aspects of content validity. As regards to the full sample, as well as on individual level, it compares the results measured by the standard trust variable to data obtained from other well-known survey tools of trust measurement, such as the trust radiuses, the ANES trust questionnaire, and the trust index. Of course, such a comprehensive and unprecedented content validity of the standard trust variable could be done only on primer survey data acquired for this purpose. The main finding of the paper is that the standard trust variable is imprecise in its identification of trusting respondents, insofar as compares to results of other survey tools a significant number of these ‘self-reported high-trusters’ turned out to be rather distrusters.