Political trust database

This database is a part of work package 01 – Quantitative indicators and long-term trends of political trust, led by Claudiu Tufiș, UOB-RO. The first report of WP1, D1.1 Literature review and research paper on measuring trust, was submitted in July and provided and up-to-date survey of literature and a comprehensive overview of the existing approaches in the social sciences to measuring trust and trustworthiness, including interpersonal and institutional forms of trust (Norris, 2023). The second report, D1.2 Methodological paper on trust data harmonization, was submitted in October and offered a detailed analysis of the existing measures of trust, as well as a proposal for a harmonization scheme to be used in the Trust in European Democracies project in preparing the third deliverable (Tufiș, Ghica & Radu, 2023). This third output, D1.3 Long-Term trends of Political Trust Dynamics (1980-2023): Dataset and Codebook, consists of an electronic dataset including 91 different measures of trust that have been used in academic comparative studies in European countries between 1980 and 2023, both in their original form as well as in harmonized versions. The dataset is accompanied by the corresponding codebook, which offers the readers / users of the dataset all the relevant information to be able to select the variables to be further analyzed. The first version of the dataset was released in January 2024. After this, the dataset will be constantly updated throughout the duration of the project, new data being included in future versions as they become available. 

In terms of coverage, the dataset includes data for 44 European countries for a period of 1980-2023. Te dataset includes 91 variables measuring interpersonal trust, institutional trust, and trust in other nations. Survey data included into the database originates from: Eurobarometer (EB), European Social Survey (ESS), European Values Study (EVS), World Values Survey (WVS), International Social Survey Program (ISSP), New Democracies Barometer (NDB) / New Europe Barometer (NEB), Central and Eastern European Barometer (CEEB), Applicant and Candidate Countries Eurobarometer (CCEB).

Citation: Tufiș, C., Ghica, L., Radu, B. (2023). Long-Term Trends of Political Trust Dynamics (1980-2023): Dataset and Codebook. Working paper no.1.3. TRUEDEM: Trust in European Democracies Project (www.truedem.eu).