Masters Theses

Date of Award

12-1994

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Major

Psychology

Major Professor

Warren H. Jones

Committee Members

Kathleen Lawler, John Lounsbury

Abstract

Previous research involving trust has conceptualized the construct as a generalized tendency to rely on the words or actions of others as potentially beneficial or nonthreatening. This conceptualization has been applied to some studies of specific relationships. Unfortunately, it has been demonstrated that such generalized trust measures do not accurately assess trust of a specific relational partner. This distinction has been drawn in the literature and several researchers have developed instruments to measure a relational type of trust. These instruments, however, have limitations. The Present research sought to develop an inventory that represented a generalized trust, a type of trust specific to a romantic partner (Partner Trust), and a type of trust specific to one's social network members (Network Trust). Items were generated to represent these a priori classifications and administered to a group of 187 college students for the purposes of conducting reliability analyses. These analyses resulted in the revised version of the Trust Inventory which meets normal standards for reliability. This version was presented with other trust measures and other construct measures to a group of 552 college students for the purposes of assessing the validity of the Inventory scales.Results indicated that the scale is a reliable measure of the three types of trust and each is related differentially, as would be expected, to constructs theoretically related to the three a priori classifications of trust. Additional analyses across individual scales revealed a similar pattern of results at the level of the construct. These findings support the validity of interpretations of the Inventory scale scores, as well as the utility of a distinction between the conceptualizations of a generalized type of trust and a relational type of trust.

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