Trust in politics

Trust in politics was measured using four indicators: trust in civil servants, politicians, the Dutch House of Representatives and the European Union. Respondents were able to indicate whether they had ‘a great deal of trust’, ‘moderate trust’, ‘not very much trust’ or ‘no trust at all’ in each institution. These responses are scored on a scale of 4 to 1, with a higher score indicating a higher level of trust. The scores were then added together to give a total score of between 4 and 16. This total score was categorised as ‘no trust’ (4–9) and ‘trust’ (10–16), with the cut-off point based on the average proportion of respondents expressing moderate trust or a great deal of trust in the individual indicators.