An exploration and advancement of the concept of trust

Background. Trust is a concept used both in everyday language and in the sc ientific realm. An exploration of the conceptualizations of trust within th e disciplines of nursing, medicine, psychology and sociology, revealed that trust is an ambiguous scientific concept. Aims. In, order to increase the pragmatic utility of the concept of trust f or scientific application, further clarification and development of the con cept was undertaken. Methods. First, a concept analysis was conducted with the aim of clarifying the state of the science of discipline-specific conceptualizations of trus t. The criterion-based method of concept analysis as described by Morse and colleagues was used (Morse et al. 1996a, 1996b, Morse 2000). This analytic process enabled the assessment of the scientific maturity of the concept o f trust. The interdisciplinary concept of trust was found to be immature. B ased on this level of maturity it was determined that in order to advance t he concept of trust toward greater maturity, techniques of concept developm ent using the literature as data were applied. In this process, questions w ere 'asked of the data' (in this case, the selected disciplinary literature s). to identify the conceptual components of trust. Results. The inquiry into the concept of trust led to the development of an expanded interdisciplinary conceptual definition by merging the most coher ent commonalties from each discipline. Conclusions. The newly developed interdisciplinary conceptualization advanc es the concept toward maturity, that is, a more refined, pragmatic and high er-order concept. The refined concept of trust transcends the contextual bo undaries of each discipline in a truly interdisciplinary scientific fashion .