SaPT is a two-year programme funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) under the Understanding Population Trends and Processes (UPTAP) programme. It is led by Dr Patrick Stugis and Dr Nick Allum of the Department of Sociology at the University of Surrey. The aim of the project is to apply a range of advanced statistical modeling techniques to the UK's rich secondary data resources to investigate the causes and consequences of social and political trust.

Interpersonal Social Trust

Interpersonal, or social trust has been proposed as key to variation in economic growth, rates of criminal offending and victimisation, morbidity, quality of life and the stability of democratic systems of government.

Theoretical accounts of social trust have advanced considerably in the last decade or so, with contributions from political science (Putnam), economics (Dasgupta), and sociology (Coleman) seeking to elucidate the historical, rational and normative underpinnings of trust.

An enduring problem in the study of both social and politial trust relates to the direction of causality. While theoretical notions of trust as a 'social lubricant' are founded on the premise that trust is generated through interpersonal networks and social interaction, it is plausible that the mechanism also runs in the opposite direction. That is to say, more trusting individuals may select into networks and associations. This issue of causal ordering is perhaps the primary focus of the work we are conducting on the project.