Improving media trust research through better measurement: An item response theory perspective

While trust in news media has come to the forefront of scholarly and public debate in recent years, academic researchers have raised persistent concern that measurement issues have prevented a better understanding of the concept. This research introduces an item response theory (IRT) perspective to advance the state-of-the-art in media trust measurement beyond recent conceptual and analytical progress. I argue that standard survey instruments that concentrate on the perceived believability of news media restrict our capability to measure truly low media trust. Furthermore, I suggest an important yet previously unnoticed pathway to overcoming this restriction in a scale by Abdulla et al. that captures currency perceptions alongside believability perceptions. Using a representative survey conducted in Germany, I find robust empirical evidence that capturing currency vs. believability perceptions significantly impacts our ability to accurately measure lower vs. higher levels of media trust. The findings have implications for not only studies of media trust’s associations with antecedent and consequential constructs but any attempt to determine the true amount and divergence of citizens’ media trust. More generally, the results demonstrate how IRT aids in putting scholarly debates on the dimensionality and interplay of trust with distrust on more common and fruitful grounds.