This week, Professor Claire Wallace will be presenting an invited paper at the Social Indicators Monitoring Seminar at the Villa Vigoni on Lake Como in Italy.
The seminar, entitled Weakening Social Cohesion in Europe? Indicators, Analysis and Policy Implications focuses on her paper, 'Changing Patterns of Trust in Europe'.
Using the World Values Survey, the paper looks at changes over time in different kinds of trust between 1980 and 2017.
The findings show that while trust in politics has fallen, trust in other institutions (such as education, social security, police, armed forces, civil service, and the press) has been fairly stable and even risen.
Having divided Europe into "High Trust" countries (including Norway, Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands) where trust has generally increased, and "Low Trust" countries (Hungary, Czech Republic, Romania) where trust of all kinds has declined, the UK emerges towards the bottom of the "High Trust" group.
The paper is currently at the early stage of analysis, and a more detailed analysis will be carried out over the coming months.