Australian Constitutional Values Survey 2023-27

The Australian Research Council Discovery Project Mapping & Harnessing Public Mistrust (DP230101777) is a five year project developing, piloting and applying new ways of more accurately and efficiently measuring levels and dynamics of public trust in Australia and beyond.

Participant information

In October and November 2023, we have engaged National Field Services and Omnipoll to conduct a confidential telephone survey of over 1,000 randomly selected Australian adult residents. The survey asks for your views about trust, and the reasons why you trust or mistrust different individual public officials and government institutions.

The survey is totally confidential and only anonymised results will be provided to our research team. The survey has also been approved by the Griffith University Human Research Ethics Committee (GU 2023/773).

Have you been asked to participate? Download our information sheet for the full information about the survey.

Participant Information Sheet

If you have any concerns or complaints about the ethical conduct of the research, please contact the Manager, Research Ethics, Griffith University on (07) 3735 4375 or research-ethics@griffith.edu.au.

Project summary

Declining public trust is well recognised as a problem of democratic government, including in Australia. However solutions are more elusive, confounded by the reality that mistrust and distrust play not just negative, but positive roles in our existing political and constitutional traditions. This project aims to be the first to comprehensively map the positive values of mistrust in citizen political attitudes and experience, building on previous Constitutional Values Surveys (2008-21) to test new measures of the content of trust including a first-ever longitudinal study of changing trust over time. The results will inform concrete solutions to three key policy reform dilemmas, providing better answers for sustaining public trust overall.

Research team

  1. Professor A J Brown, Griffith University
  2. Dr Max Grömping, Griffith University
  3. Dr Jacob Deem, Central Queensland University
  4. Professor Andrea Carson, La Trobe University
  5. Professor Rodney Smith, The University of Sydney

Our objectives

  1. To develop, pilot and apply new ways of more accurately and efficiently measuring levels and dynamics of public trust in Australia and beyond, as a necessary complement to historical single-construct measures of trust
  2. To apply a new multi-level empirical approach to understanding when and how mistrust can be better institutionalised (constitutionally or in regulatory design and practice) to more effectively address rising tides of 'critical citizenship' and 'enculturate' greater trustworthiness among leaders
  3. To apply this knowledge towards better solutions to important Australian policy challenges, as both empirical case studies for longitudinal and experimental research and vital problems in their own right

Need more information?

For information about the research, please contact the project leader.