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Making Civic Trust Less Abstract: A Framework for Measuring Trust Within Cities

Making Civic Trust Less Abstract: A Framework for Measuring Trust Within Cities

A new report on how governments can measure trust in their services and make responsive improvements.

By Claire Skatrud, Andrew J. Zahuranec, and Stefaan Verhulst

Civic trust is essential for strong, functional communities and effective governments. It gives institutions the license to operate. It allows people to form relationships within their communities.

However, trust is also abstract and little understood. It is difficult to define and even more difficult to quantify. For city leaders, this presents a conundrum: How can they act to improve civic trust if they don’t fully understand what it looks like?

The GovLab, together with the New York City Civic Engagement Commission, has sought to answer this question through its latest publication: Making Civic Trust Less Abstract: A Framework for Measuring Trust Within Cities.

Cover of the new report

This report proposes a practical framework for city officials to diagnose and strengthen civic trust through observable indicators and actionable interventions. Rather than attempting to quantify trust as an abstract concept, the framework distinguishes between the drivers of trust — direct experiences and institutional interventions — and its manifestations, both emotional and behavioral.

This content is then followed by an Implementation Framework, a guide intended to help government officials design specific interventions that can mitigate or reinforce certain behaviors or emotions. Drawing on literature reviews, expert workshops, and field engagement with the New York City Civic Engagement Commission (CEC), the report presents a three-phase approach: (1) baseline assessment of trust indicators, (2) analysis of causal drivers, and (3) design and continuous evaluation of targeted interventions.

The framework is demonstrated through a hypothetical case study exploring the implementation in a municipal parks department, and a real-world case study of the citywide participatory budgeting initiative, The People’s Money.

It concludes with an interactive checklist**** of behavioral indicators, trust drivers, possible interventions, and context-specific considerations for different agencies;

Read the full report HERE.

For questions or feedback, please reach out to us at datastewards@thegovlab.org.

Andrew J. Zahuranec headshot

Author

Andrew J. Zahuranec

Course Facilitator

Andrew J. Zahuranec is a Research and Partnership Manager at The GovLab, where he oversees projects focused on how advances in science and technology can improve governance and help society better address systemic challenges such as climate change and migration. Andrew has coordinated and managed various initiatives, including the #Data4COVID19 Africa Challenge—a collaboration between l'Agence française de développement (AFD), Expertise France, and The GovLab to accelerate responsible data innovation to tackle COVID-19 pandemic and its effects across Africa—and the Responsible Data for Children initiative—a collaboration with UNICEF to promote the more effective and responsible use of data for and about children in settings afflicted with challenges such as forced migration, climate change, and disaster response. In addition, Andrew conducts significant research on data collaboration and data stewardship, especially as they relate to ongoing, dynamic crises. He developed publications including The #Data4COVID19 Review, The Use of Mobility Data for Responding to the COVID-19 Pandemic, and What Is Mobility Data? Where Is It Used? , all of which examined the role that non-traditional data could play in understanding patterns of human mobility for pandemic response. He is a lead for the Data Stewards Academy and has facilitated courses on data stewardship for the State of Maryland.

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