Appendices

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A conceptual model underpins our understanding of trust and satisfaction

The relationship between trust, satisfaction and other important factors is well understood conceptually based on academic research. ​

  • Trust and satisfaction exist in a feedback loop, as set out in the diagram below. ​
  • Trust conveys expectations about needs being met. ​
  • Satisfaction is a product of the extent to which services live up to those expectations. ​
  • Other independent factors feed into that loop and ultimately influence trust, such as the individual characteristics and needs of the person doing the trusting, the action of the trustee (in this case the service experience) and other contextual factors
Figure 5: Conceptual model of the drivers of trust and satisfaction
Flow diagram- General Trust in Australian Public Services, feeding into this is (1) Context & (2) Individual characteristics & needs. From General Trust is an arrow (4) pointing to Expectations, feeding into this is (3) Individual characteristics and needs. From Expectations is an arrow (5) pointing to satisfaction, in between this section is an arrow (6) feeding in from Service Experience. From Satisfaction arrow (7) that goes to specific trust, which flows back into (8) general trust & (9) expectations.

Method changes

We made changes to how we measure trust and satisfaction in the survey this financial year. As such, results in this report are not comparable with previous reports.​

The main change is that we now ask respondents to rate their trust and satisfaction on a 5-point scale, rather than the 7-point scale previously used. This resulted in a greater proportion of respondents rating their trust and satisfaction as neutral (i.e. neither agree nor disagree).​

To allow for meaningful comparisons, the results presented in this report from previous years have been corrected to put them on an equivalent basis to this year’s results.​

The correction method assumes that a proportion of respondents in previous years would also have been more neutral in their responses if asked using the 5-point scale, and adjusts the trusting, distrusting, satisfied, and dissatisfied rates accordingly. The method has been quality assured by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.​

We also changed the way we asked about which services people accessed. For most services this did not affect the results. However, for the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) it resulted in over 20 times as many people answering questions about the service. This resulted in reported trust and satisfaction for the AEC becoming much more neutral.​

For more information see the detailed paper on our website.