1. Social and Political Trust: A Longitudinal and Comparative Perspective
Patrick Sturgis, Nick Allum
and Roger Patulny
Department of Sociology
University of Surrey

2. Project Details ‘Large grant’ project Two years from 1 March 06
Causes and consequences of interpersonal trust and trust in government
Main data sources: BHPS, ESS, BSA, NCDS

3. Trust is “the belief that others will not, at worst, knowingly or willingly do you harm, and will, at best, act in your interests” (Delhey and Newton, 2005)
“Trust lubricates social life” (Putnam, 1993)

4. 1. Local Areas and Generalised Trust
Most empirical research on generalised trust focuses on either:
Societal
Individual
An important missing level here is the ‘local area’
Multi-level structural equation models using ESS data (UK only)
Variance components model suggests around 10% of total variance due to local areas

5. 2. A comparative perspective
Extend models from stage 1 to look at country as a new level
3 level model, with ‘nuts’ as the intermediate level
Test a range of hypotheses regarding societal influences on trust
Particular interest in cross-level interactions

6. 3. Reciprocal Causality?
Interpersonal trust posited to emerge from formal and informal social networks
But in which direction(s) do the causal arrows point?
Cross-lagged Structural Equation Model of social trust and associational membership
BHPS 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005?

7. 4. Cohort Analysis
Examine long-term trends in social trust, trust in government and associational membership
Examine evidence of an interaction with gender
Data from BSA, BES and anywhere else we can find