Report by the Office for Statistical Regulation: “This report asks: what is trust?; who trusts?; and how do you build trust? These questions help us to understand whether the public trusts those involved in the production, and communication, of official statistics and what accounts for different levels of trust. These questions are answered through synthesising existing literature, and supported by primary analysis (described in Methodology). Thereafter, it concludes with a series of practical recommendations which can be adopted in order to increase levels of trust, improve trustworthiness and contribute to the overall vision of ensuring that official statistics serve the public good.
This report investigates levels of trust and draws together evidence exploring influencing factors. As the literature and existing studies focusing explicitly on the topic of trust in “official statistics” are relatively sparse – with obvious exceptions including the Public Confidence in Official Statistics (PCOS) survey and a small collation of commissioned surveys dedicated to this theme – this review adopts a wider approach which analyses levels of public trust more broadly. It considers studies which explore levels of public trust in actors and objects involved in the production, or communication, of official statistics. This includes the government; the Civil Service; scientists and experts; journalists and the media; research on communication platforms; and evidence more broadly.
From this broader approach to exploring trust, readers are provided with an overall picture of public trust levels. To support this aim, this review adopts a cross-disciplinary outlook drawing on psychological, sociological and political accounts of trust, and considers a range of models developed within these fields…(More)”.
