A Systematic Review of Psychometric Properties of General Trust Measures Across the Lifespan

Belief in the trustworthiness of other people is foundational to human interaction, and thus, there is interest in its assessment across many disciplines. However, disunity in approaches to its conceptualization has resulted in a myriad of measures. This review collates and systematically appraises self-report general trust measures for use in either children or adults; examining target age, type of trust assessed, and measurement and psychometric properties. A systematic literature search (protocol registered at osf.io/vpu98) identified 35 records describing the validation of 25 general trust measures. Measurement properties were evaluated according to COSMIN standards. Eight measures met or exceeded all criteria for reliability, and structural and convergent validity; these include two child measures Malti et al. (2018; Rotenberg et al. (2005) and six adult measures Carrington, (2007); Frazier et al. (2013); McKnight et al. (2002); Robbins, (2019); Yamagishi & Yamagishi, (1994). Considerations for the use of each in research are discussed.