With J-factor, adolescents involved in more research of social relevance
The research conducted by Alessio Muscillo, associate professor at Mercatorum University, in collaboration with his colleagues Elena Sestini, Gabriele Lombardi, Francesca Garbin and Paolo Pin, was recently published in the journal Social Indicators Research. The title of the article, Increasing trust in institutions: evidence from an experimental study on adolescents in Italy, clearly reflects the focus of the work, which proposes a quantitative analysis of a randomized survey experiment conducted on a sample of 1,433 upper secondary school students in Italy. The objective of the study was to measure the levels of trust in various institutions (health, education, politics, justice and defense) and identify the determining factors that influence trust in science, with particular attention to health issues, as highlighted in the abstract of the article.
The Fondazione Mondo Digitale also collaborated in the research, involving the schools in its network so that students could answer the questions in the questionnaire.
Between January and May of last year, researcher Muscillo coordinated four studies on topics of social relevance:
- Changes in young people's lifestyles from one year to the next following the pandemic emergency and related containment measures (Vaccines, December 2021).
- Trust in science institutions and science communicators (Social Indicators Research, January 2022).
- Changes in lifestyles linked to scientific opinions, with particular reference to the adoption of sustainable, pro-social and pro-environmental behaviors (working paper currently under review for publication, February 2022).
- Cognitive biases related to scientific-medical issues (study in preparation, March 2022).
The recently published study (January 2025) focuses on a crucial moment in the growth of adolescents, when their reference values develop and consolidate. Indirectly, the analysis also offers a perspective on young people's propensity to adhere to social rules. Trust, in fact, represents a fundamental element for the functioning of a solid and structured democratic society. “It is a complex variable to promote and maintain, which requires constant commitment from the education system and institutions”, notes the researcher Muscillo.
Research structure and results
At the beginning of 2022, with the support of the Fondazione Mondo Digitale, upper secondary schools from all over Italy, representing different fields of study, were involved. The students were given online tests based on three different scenarios. The questions aimed to assess the degree of reliability attributed to different sources of information:
- the media (social networks, television, newspapers, radio);
- reference figures (parents, doctors, friends).
In particular, the students were asked to express their level of trust in certain scientific and health information, depending on the source that had provided it. Considering the recent pandemic, the results showed that recent experiences have had a significant influence on the perceptions of adolescents.
The analysis revealed relatively high levels of trust in scientific and health institutions, as well as in experts in the field. These data confirm the results of previous studies and are consistent with Istat surveys. On the contrary, the political system - and in particular the Government - enjoys a much lower level of trust. In quantitative terms, trust in the healthcare system, law enforcement and schools stands at average values of 6.1, 5.4 and 4.7 respectively on a scale of 1 to 10, while levels of trust in Parliament and political parties are significantly lower (3 and 2.3 respectively).
One of the most interesting aspects that emerged from the study concerns the inversely proportional relationship between the intensive use of mobile devices and trust in science and institutions. The data suggests an increased propensity among young people to consider the content conveyed by social networks to be increasingly reliable.
Trust dynamics and social implications
“Along with experts, doctors and friends are also considered reliable sources, while parents are to a lesser extent. However, when young people read information, they tend to consider it more credible if attributed to a scientific authority, such as a doctor. If the information is accompanied by an image - for example a photo of a doctor, a friend or a parent - an emotional component comes into play that leads to statistically indistinguishable levels of trust among the different sources,” explains Muscillo.
Another interesting element concerns gender differences: boys show greater trust in doctors who communicate scientific information, while girls tend to maintain constant levels of trust regardless of the source (doctor, friends or parents). Furthermore, the level of education seems to have a positive influence on trust in scientific and health institutions: students with good academic performance show greater trust in health and research professionals.
How much of this attitude can be attributed to the pandemic? “The literature highlights a general decline in trust in institutions in recent decades, a phenomenon whose link with the rise of social networks is not yet fully understood. The pandemic has certainly amplified these dynamics, making them more evident,” says Muscillo.
A crucial aspect is represented by scientific communication and its media perception. “When a representative of the scientific community presents data and evidence, but is confronted with representatives of minority positions, a distorted perception is generated in the public. For example, in television debates between supporters and opponents of vaccines, the no-vax minorities are over-represented: although they make up only 1% of the population, on TV they seem to be 50%. This media imbalance alters the perception of reality,” Muscillo observes. “It is essential that the scientific community and the world of information work together to avoid creating misperceptions about scientific evidence. A case in point is climate change: the widespread impression is that there is still an open debate among scientists, when in fact only details are still being discussed. The basics of the phenomenon are now universally recognized.”
Future prospects
Other research on the pandemic also converges on similar conclusions: increasing transparency, education and training strengthens trust in young people, as it does for the entire population. However, access to information through social media introduces new risks related to misinformation, a topic still under debate in the scientific literature (see Huber et al., 2019, Public Understanding of Science).
Among future research perspectives, Muscillo mentions ongoing studies on sustainable behaviors and the influence of cognitive biases in decision-making processes related to scientific issues.
By Onelia Onorati, press office of the Fondazione Mondo Digitale
