Measuring Levels of Trust

Abstract

College student respondents involved in romantic relationships (N= 445) completed questionnaires containing measures of trust and related constructs. Analyses focused on two sets of issues. The first concerned the validity of the Trust Inventory, an innovative self-report measure that partitions trust into separate domains including (a) specific relationship partners, called Partner Trust; (b) family and friends, termed Network Trust; and (c) people-in-general, called Generalized Trust. The second set of issues involved several previously unanswered questions derived from the trust literature, specifically: (a) the comparability of competing measures of trust, (b) the convergence between trust in specific people vs trust in human nature, and (c) whether trust is more closely related to one's personality or emotions or to the quality of one's relationships. Results generally supported the validity of the Trust Inventory and its tripartite division of types of trust including the new concept of Network Trust. In addition, various measures of trust were moderately to strongly interrelated. However, results also supported the distinction between relational trust (trust in relationship partners) and global trust (trust in human nature). Measures of relational trust were significantly more strongly related to relationship quality and commitment, whereas measures of global trust were slightly more strongly related to indices of personality and emotion. This latter difference was not significant.