Understanding Confidence in American Institutions Over Time: Comparing Two National Surveys

Oregon Convention Center 

This research explores historical trends in how much confidence Americans have in political, government, and social institutions as reported by two national surveys. Using responses to comparably worded questions in the General Social Survey (GSS) and the Gallup World Poll about respondents' confidence in various American institutions, we compare trends in public confidence over five decades spanning 1973 to 2022. While each survey provides conceptually equivalent measures, both reflect different sampling designs and provide a unique opportunity to reconcile trends between public opinion and social survey sources. Normalizing each source to reflect the share of respondents with a great deal of confidence in each type of institution, we show long run declines in confidence across institutions through a series of visualizations. Considering both surveys as independent estimates of public confidence, we apply cointegration tests to assess whether the difference between both survey measures is stable over time. Our findings provide a unique comparison between two separate surveys measuring public confidence, noting how each source captures common trends in institutional trust.

public confidence

institutions

governance 

Section on Statistical Computing