Measurement: Impact, trends and developments

Early this month, whilst sat between meetings in Kuala Lumpur, I spotted an intriguing tweet by @DavidBrain. It simply read, “The set for today's presentation of the first ever Trust Barometer data for Malaysia #edeltrust http://yfrog.com/mnfmfyij”. A smile crept across my face as I realized that David was in town to present the findings of the 2012 Edelman Trust Barometer. Needless to say, I rearranged my schedule so that I could attend the event at the Mandarin Oriental in Kuala Lumpur.

The 2012 Edelman Trust Barometer survey aimed to gauge attitudes about the state of trust in businesses, governments, NGOs and media entities across 25 countries and quite frankly this year’s report was indeed very interesting. The survey was in its 12th year and is produced by StrategyOne, a Daniel J. Edelman company and is a leading market research firm. The results were shared at the 2012 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland held from January 25th to 29th. Here are some of the insights from the presentation in Malaysia.

David began the presentation by sharing that trust in governments and CEOs is declining. However, he went on to say that notably, trust was highest in the following countries: China, UAE, Singapore, India and Indonesia. The survey was quantitative in nature and questions were open to interpretation and did not speculate about reasons for the positions. On the other hand, panellists speculated that trust might be derived from the economic (or perceived) trajectory of these markets. The panel concluded that trust was bestowed because standard of living is generally improving in these markets and people are optimistic about the future. The highest positioned European country was the Netherlands, ranked 7th.

It was also intriguing to note that whilst NGOs remain the most trusted institution globally, yet they saw a decline on the previous year. Interestingly, Media was the only institution to see an increase it its global trust level – it rose above 50% in trust for the first time. This came as a surprise given the global nature of the ongoing News International phone hacking scandal and the resulting Leveson Inquiry in the UK. One possible interpretation of the result was that Media has improved in its role of holding officialdom accountable - something that it arguably did not do during the financial crisis; as a result Media is now considered more trustworthy.

The report further stated that, “Overall Malaysia does fit an Asia-Pacific norm and is generally more trusting. Of the 25 countries we surveyed, it ranks 10th most trusting (57% of opinion formers trust its institutions to do what is right), but it is behind close neighbours Singapore (67%) and Indonesia (63%) and other Asia Pacific markets like China (76%), India (65% ) and Hong Kong (61%).” I cannot help but wonder how such findings may correlate with election results as trust will be more influenced by such events in the coming months as Malaysians await the next general election.

Further facts, figures and interpretations can be found here: http://trust.edelman.com/. Special thanks to Edelman for sharing the results.