OECD Guidelines on Measuring Trust
Trust, both interpersonal trust, and trust in institutions, is a key ingredient of
growth, societal well-being and governance. As a first step to improving existing
measures of trust, the OECD Guidelines on Measuring Trust provide international recommendations
on collecting, publishing, and analysing trust data to encourage their use by National
Statistical Offices (NSOs). The Guidelines also outline why measures of trust are
relevant for monitoring and policy making, and why NSOs have a critical role in enhancing
the usefulness of existing trust measures. Besides looking at the statistical quality
of trust measures, best approaches for measuring trust in a reliable and consistent
way and guidance for reporting, interpretation and analysis are provided. A number
of prototype survey modules that national and international agencies can use in their
household surveys are included.
These Guidelines have been produced as part of the OECD Better Life Initiative, a
pioneering project launched in 2011, with the objective to measure society’s progress
across eleven domains of well-being. They complement a series of similar measurement
guidelines on subjective well-being, micro statistics on household wealth, integrated
analysis of the distribution on household income, consumption and wealth, as well
as the quality of the working environment.
Published on November 23, 2017