Political trust among British first-time voters: a mixed methods investigation

Recent evidence from extensive, cross-national survey data has shown a significant decline in public
trust around the world, with serious implications for the future of governance and democracy. Focusing
on the UK, my proposed research is a mixed-method investigation into public trust amongst British young
people who will be eligible to vote for the first time in the 2024 General Election (first-time voters). This
focus has been chosen due to the centrality of this demographic to debates over public trust both across
the world and in the UK. Access into sixth forms for the recruitment of my purposive sample will be
enabled by collaboration with the prominent citizenship education charity Young Citizens [letter of
support upon request].
My proposed research aligns the aims of the ESRC-funded TrustGov project, co-led by my proposed
supervisor Professor Will Jennings. Using analysis of questionnaire data and exploratory focus groups, the
research will investigate quantitative and qualitative aspects of trust, mistrust and distrust. Stage I of the
research will utilise measures from the World Values Survey 7th to quantitatively measure trust, mistrust
and distrust within the sample. This stage will generate novel data on the dimensions of political trust
among British young people and enable direct comparisons between first-time voters and the dimensions
of trust amongst the other age groups in the UK. Stage II will involve a series of 6-10 exploratory focus
groups with the same sample, giving a deeper insight into the trust attitudes of the participants than
gained through survey methods alone.