2013 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

An Examination of the Reliability and Validity of Political Trust

Research Project

Project/Area Number	24730131
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
Allocation Type	Multi-year Fund
Research Field	Politics
Research Institution	Tohoku University (2013) Hyogo Earthquake Memorial 21st Century Research Institute (2012)
Principal Investigator	ZENKYO Masahiro 東北大学, 国際高等研究教育機構, 助教 (50625085)
Project Period (FY)	2012-04-01 – 2014-03-31
Keywords	政治信頼 / 尺度の妥当性 / サーベイ実験
Research Abstract	The aim of this research is to examine the reliability and validity of political trust scale by survey experiment. This research especially focuses on the effect of not question wording but answer scale design: 3-point, 5-point or 10-point scale. The findings of this research are following three. First, the distribution of political trust is changed by scale rating. Second, the correlations between political trust and the other variables are also changed by scale rating. Third, however, the effects of scale rating depend on context surrounding respondents. In other words, this finding may imply that it is difficult to generalize the effect of answer scale design.