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Trust in American Government: Longitudinal Measurement Equivalence in the ANES, 1964–2008

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  • Dmitriy Poznyak
  • Bart Meuleman
  • Koen Abts
  • George Bishop

Abstract

For over 50 years (1958–2012) the American National Election Studies (ANES) survey has been measuring citizens’ evaluations of the trustworthiness of the “government in Washington”—an indicator that has been widely used to monitor the dynamics of political trust in the US over time. However, a critical assumption in using attitudinal constructs for longitudinal research is that the meaning-and-interpretation of such items should be comparable across groups of respondents at any one point in time and across samples over time. Using multigroup confirmatory factor analysis for ordered-categorical data, we test the measurement equivalence assumption with data collected by the ANES from 1964 to 2008. The results confirm that the ANES’ political trust scale has the same basic factorial structure over time. But for two key items, several threshold parameters were found to be different across time points, indicating that the meaning-and-interpretation of these questions, and especially the question about whether the government in Washington wastes money that people pay in taxes, varies significantly over time. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014

Suggested Citation

  • Dmitriy Poznyak & Bart Meuleman & Koen Abts & George Bishop, 2014. "Trust in American Government: Longitudinal Measurement Equivalence in the ANES, 1964–2008," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 118(2), pages 741-758, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:soinre:v:118:y:2014:i:2:p:741-758
    DOI: 10.1007/s11205-013-0441-5
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Stegmueller, Daniel, 2011. "Apples and Oranges? The Problem of Equivalence in Comparative Research," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 19(4), pages 471-487.
    2. Citrin, Jack, 1974. "Comment: The Political Relevance of Trust in Government," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 68(3), pages 973-988, September.
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    4. Blasius, Jörg & Thiessen, Victor, 2001. "Methodological Artifacts in Measures of Political Efficacy and Trust: A Multiple Correspondence Analysis," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 9(1), pages 1-20, January.
    5. Citrin, Jack & Green, Donald Philip, 1986. "Presidential Leadership and the Resurgence of Trust in Government," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 16(4), pages 431-453, October.
    6. Steenkamp, Jan-Benedict E M & Baumgartner, Hans, 1998. "Assessing Measurement Invariance in Cross-National Consumer Research," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 25(1), pages 78-90, June.
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    Cited by:

    1. Joseph A Hamm & Corwin Smidt & Roger C Mayer, 2019. "Understanding the psychological nature and mechanisms of political trust," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(5), pages 1-20, May.
    2. Kim-Lee Tuxhorn & John W. D'Attoma & Sven Steinmo, 2019. "Trust in institutions: Narrowing the ideological gap over the federal budget," Journal of Behavioral Public Administration, Center for Experimental and Behavioral Public Administration, vol. 2(1).
    3. Sedef Turper & Kees Aarts, 2017. "Political Trust and Sophistication: Taking Measurement Seriously," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 130(1), pages 415-434, January.
    4. Anson Au, 2024. "Neobanks in emerging markets: a risk assessment," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 11(1), pages 1-8, December.
    5. T. W. G. Meer & E. Ouattara, 2019. "Putting ‘political’ back in political trust: an IRT test of the unidimensionality and cross-national equivalence of political trust measures," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 53(6), pages 2983-3002, November.

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