Can We Trust the Measurement of Trust?

Sammanfattning: This study investigates the concept of ‘trust’ through exploring the relationship between answers to a standard survey questions and behaviour observed in an economical experiment. The survey question has been used in a wide range of reports and studies related to economic development. Therefore, ensuring that the survey question has high validity and that it accurately captures the level of trust in the population is of utmost importance. Students at the University of Dar es-Salaam were asked to participate in a trust game and answer survey questions relating to trust. By comparing their behaviour in the trust game with their survey answers, the predictive power of the survey questions were investigated. Except from the standard survey question, an additional set of questions was included in the survey to investigate if these questions could better predict the behaviour in the experiment. It was found that the standard survey question could not predict behaviour in the trust game. Based on the results from the analysis we question the use of the standard survey question for measuring trust and propose the use of organisational membership as an indicator of trust.