How Do You Measure Trust?

How do you know whether your civic engagement efforts are working or not?  How do you know where to start?  Is there sufficient trust to begin deliberation on a difficult issue, or do you need to build trust first?  How do you know if civic engagement would help or hurt?  Research has shown that civic engagement can increase trust leading to

• increased civic participation
• increased capacity for collective action
• enhanced responsiveness of government, and
• greater social cohesion across groups within a community.

Conversely, poor public engagement can erode trust, and even lead to political retaliation or increased division within the community.  (Gaventa and Barrett, Oct. 2010. So What Difference Does It Make? Mapping the Outcomes of Citizen Engagement.  Institute of Development Studies).

In one of our Spring calls we reviewed our Civic Health Diagnostic Workbook and several other resources people are using in their efforts to measure outcomes of civic engagement and ensure that those build, rather than erode, trust.  Our workbook is specifically designed to help civic leaders turn their subjective interpretations of community strengths and weaknesses into a data set that can be monitored.

Another tool we like is the “4 cores of trust” checklists in The Speed of Trust. These can be adapted to apply to community interactions, and the concepts of “trust dividends” or “trust taxes” which are also outlined in the book are concepts that we find groups readily understand and are interested in discussing.  We have found that introducing these concepts by drawing a continuum of tax to dividend (with definitions), and asking citizens to mark where they think the community is and why can spark some very interesting discussions.

Several other tools for developing an effective system for evaluating trust in your community were recommended during the call.  These included The Empowerment Manual,  using ripple mapping to measure both how people are taking action or taking on new roles because of engagement, and resources from Living Cities.

If you have had success with a particular resource, or have a question about evaluating trust, we invite you to share that in the comments.

Accountability and Context

As noted in our first post in this series on accountability, accountability is a key component of building the trust needed for effective dialogue.   Part of accountability is reporting back, although that reporting needs to be relevant to the needs and concerns of the audience if it is to build trust.  As we noted in our second post, the best reports of progress are aligned with clearly identified citizen priorities and help citizens understand the consequences of various actions and policies.  This type of alignment is more likely to occur if the context for reports on progress is established in advance, through dialogue on what is needed or beneficial for the community.  When the purposes and assumptions that underlie various goals are articulated in advance, the subsequent sharing of data supports ongoing and productive dialogue over changing needs, shrinking resources, and conflicting priorities.  This in turn allows more integrated solutions to emerge, and promotes public acceptance of tough decisions.  This is the progression illustrated in the data to wisdom continuum.  Examples of communities (in addition to those mentioned in our last post) that have or are developing dialogues that support accountable, collaborative governance include:  Decatur, IL,  Manor, TX, and Baltimore, MD.