Measuring trust in organisational research: Review and recommendations

Abstract

Although the organisational literature is increasingly converging on common definitions and theoretical conceptualisations of trust, it is unclear whether the same is true for the measures used to operationalise trust. In this paper, we review the organisational literature to assess the degree of sophistication and convergence across studies in how trust has been measured. Our analysis of 171 papers published over 48 years revealed that the state of the art of trust measurement is rudimentary and highly fragmented. In particular, we identified a total of 129 different measures of trust. Moreover, in only 24 instances were we able to verify that a previously developed and validated measure of trust had been replicated verbatim, and 11 of these replications were by the same authors who originated the measure. In addition to the limited degree of replication, the measurement of trust in the organisational literature is characterised by weak evidence in support of construct validity and limited consensus on operational dimensions. What makes these findings even more surprising is that our review also identified several measures of trust that have been carefully developed and thoroughly validated. We profile those measures with strong measurement properties and discuss their trade-offs. We also present a framework for measuring trust that provides guidance to researchers for selecting or developing a measure of trust and propose an agenda for future research with an emphasis on re…