Title: Do you trust your parliament?
Course: UGQuants (SSPS) > Section: Causality

Do you trust your parliament?

The European Social Survey explores trust in certain institutions, such as the state parliament. We could hypothesise that being interested in politics influences your opinion of the parliament – or that people who trust in the parliament (who are not politically disillusioned) will be more likely to show an interest in politics.

Table 1: Trust in UK parliament by interest in politics

Interest in politics | Trust in UK parliament in 5 categories | Total count
1 (low or no trust) | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 (very high trust)
Very interested | 16.1% | 24.2% | 28.6% | 25.3% | 5.9% | 273
Quite interested | 18.1% | 27.1% | 30.7% | 21.3% | 2.7% | 999
Hardly interested | 27.7% | 30.3% | 29.8% | 11.0% | 1.2% | 607
Not at all interested | 50.2% | 21.6% | 21.4% | 5.7% | 1.1% | 454
Total | 26.6% | 26.5% | 28.4% | 16.1% | 2.4% | 2333

Data source: European Social Survey, round 5 (2010).

Table 1 looks at these indicators, and we find that Gamma shows a moderate association of -0.329. In other words the more the respondent trusts the UK parliament, the more likely they are to be interested in politics. (Here the Gamma figure is negative because the variables are coded in opposite directions – trust runs from lowest to highest, and interest in politics from most to least interested).

In table 2, we control for whether the respondent is part of an minority ethnic group. Such communities might have particular political concerns and feel that these are insufficiently represented at Westminster, or they could be interested in the politics of a different country but not in the UK government.

Indeed we find that amongst those respondents who do regard themselves as belonging to a minority ethnic group, the distribution of those 'very interested' in politics across the trust in parliament variable is much more even than for those who do not think of themselves as part of an ethnic minority. In comparison, a higher percentage of people in the non-minority category have moderately or very high trust in the UK parliament, and less of them have very low trust.

Table 2: Trust in UK parliament by interest in politics and whether respondent belongs to ethnic minority

Belong to minority

ethnic group
How interested in politics
Trust in UK parliament
Total count
1 (low or no trust) | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 (very high trust)
Yes | Very interested | 12.5% | 27.5% | 25.0% | 17.5% | 17.5% | 40
Quite interested | 13.9% | 23.6% | 23.6% | 26.4% | 12.5% | 72
Hardly interested | 19.0% | 26.2% | 31.0% | 19.0% | 4.8% | 42
Not at all interested | 33.3% | 20.0% | 33.3% | 10.0% | 3.3% | 30
Total | 17.9% | 24.5% | 27.2% | 20.1% | 10.3% | 184
No | Very interested | 16.2% | 22.8% | 29.8% | 27.2% | 3.9% | 228
Quite interested | 18.2% | 27.5% | 31.3% | 20.9% | 2.0% | 922
Hardly interested | 28.6% | 30.4% | 29.6% | 10.5% | .9% | 650
Not at all interested | 52.0% | 21.7% | 20.7% | 4.6% | 1.0% | 415
Total | 27.3% | 26.6% | 28.7% | 15.7% | 1.7% | 2125
Total | 26.6% | 26.5% | 28.5% | 16.0% | 2.4% | 2309

Data source: European Social Survey, round 5 (2010).

Comparing the Gamma values confirms this observation: for ethnic minority members, Gamma (-0.203) is much lower than for those who don’t consider themselves part of an ethnic minority (Gamma = -0.350). Notice, however, that due to the small number of people in ethnic minority groups, this hardly affects the overall Gamma, which was -0.329 without taking this indicator into account.