MEASURING LEVELS OF TRUST

College student respondents involved in romantic relationships (N = 44 5) completed questionnaires containing measures of trust and related c onstructs. Analyses focused on two sets of issues. The first concerned the validity of the Trust Inventory, an innovative self-report measur e that partitions trust into separate domains including (a) specific r elationship partners, called Partner Trust; (b) family and friends, te rmed Network Trust; and (c) people-in-general, called Generalized Trus t. The second set of issues involved several previously unanswered que stions derived from the trust literature, specifically: (a) the compar ability of competing measures of trust, (b) the convergence between tr ust in specific people vs trust in human nature, and (c) whether trust is more closely related to one's personality or emotions or to the qu ality of one's relationships. Results generally supported the validity of the Trust Inventory and its tripartite division of types of trust including the new concept of Network Trust. In addition, various measu res of trust were moderately to strongly interrelated. However, result s also supported the distinction between relational trust (trust in re lationship partners) and global trust (trust in human nature). Measure s of relational trust were significantly more strongly related to rela tionship quality and commitment, whereas measures of global trust were slightly more strongly related to indices of personality and emotion. This latter difference was not significant. (C) 1997 Academic Press.