Norway is a high-trust society. Citizens’ trust in other people, including those they do not know, and in key social institutions such as the Storting, the government and the courts, is consistently high and typically higher than in countries outside the Nordic region. Specific events can lead to drops in levels of trust, but such declines are usually temporary and do not normally result in a lasting reduction in trust either in our fellow citizens or in social institutions. High levels of trust oil the wheels of society and make life both simpler and better.
But how does the public’s trust in research stand? Do people trust the knowledge that is produced through the systematic use of scientific methods, and how has trust in research-based knowledge developed over time? Does trust in research vary depending on the topic? Are there groups within the population that have less trust in research than others? Who typically has high trust in research, and who has low trust? These questions were at the centre of the seminar “Trust and Turbulence: Changes in Trust in Research in Norway”, organised by the Research Council of Norway (NFR) and the Institute for Social Research (ISF) at the end of last month.
The seminar presented preliminary findings on trust in research, based on results from two survey studies that began in 2019 and are still ongoing, as well as from a survey experiment. Both survey studies were initiated and conducted by NFR from 2019 through to the end of 2023. Since 2023, ISF has been responsible for carrying them out. The results presented are based on almost 32,000 respondents in one survey and just over 35,000 respondents in the other. The experiments in the survey experiment study were designed by researchers at ISF. These experiments were implemented by ISF in 2024 and 2025, each with around 3,000 respondents. The findings have not yet been published in scientific journals and must therefore be regarded as preliminary.
There are many reasons to be concerned with the question public trust in research. The ambition that the research-based knowledge produced by our staff should help solve key societal challenges or otherwise address social needs is clearly stated in the faculty’s strategy and annual plans. The authorities, too, are keen that political decisions and the design of public services (for example, health care) should be knowledge-based, and research can be of great importance for the concrete shaping of policies and services.
Public support for and acceptance of knowledge-based decisions and priorities depend on trust in the research that forms the knowledge base for such policies. A large share of the research conducted in Norway is publicly funded, and it is reasonable to assume that the willingness to finance research through public budgets is not entirely independent of the levels of trust in research-based knowledge among both the public and politicians.
The preliminary findings presented at the well-attended seminar paint an interesting picture of continuity and change in public trust in research. One piece of good news is that the results suggest that a large majority have a high level of general trust in research. Trust in research rose during the pandemic and then fell back to roughly the level we saw before the pandemic, where around 80 per cent say that they have high trust in research. Trust in researchers is somewhat lower: around 70 per cent report that they have high trust in researchers.
Only a small minority, just under five per cent, state that they have low trust in research. Low trust in research is associated with anti-establishment attitudes and with being an “outsider” in the party system, that is, voting for parties not represented in the Storting or not reporting any party preference at all. A somewhat higher proportion, around 11 per cent, say that they have low trust in researchers. The discrepancy between expressed levels of trust in research and trust in researchers is both interesting and thought-provoking.
Although the findings indicate a high degree of general trust in research, trust levels vary considerably when respondents are asked about particular fields of research (health, school/education, climate change, renewable energy, and gender and equality research). Health research is the field that enjoys the highest level of trust, even though trust in health research has fallen since society reopened after the pandemic. While just under 80 per cent of respondents expressed high trust in health research in 2020, the corresponding figure in 2025 was just under 70 per cent.
Gender and equality research is the field that has the lowest level of trust, and this has been the case throughout the period from 2020 to 2025. In 2025, around 45 per cent stated that they had high trust in gender and equality research. The largest fall in trust during this period is found in relation to research on renewable energy. While around 63 per cent expressed high trust in this field in 2020, this proportion had fallen to around 48 per cent in 2025. The way the questions were formulated in the studies means that we cannot know whether social science research more generally is perceived as trustworthy, but the discrepancy between the relatively high level of expressed general trust in research and the more variable levels of trust in specific research topics is striking.
Can we ourselves do anything to influence the level of trust in the kind of research-based knowledge produced by the Faculty of Social Sciences? Fortunately, the answer to that question is likely to be yes. ISF’s survey experiments also examined how communicating scientific uncertainty and caveats affects public trust in research. The results suggest that explicit communication of scientific uncertainty by the researcher strengthens trust in research findings, even when the topic is controversial. Being open about the fact that the research design, the data, the analytical methods or other factors introduce a degree of uncertainty in the results does not undermine trust in research – on the contrary. These are important findings, which our colleagues in the communications department will also take into account when they support staff in their dissemination work.
Openness in research is crucial for public trust because it functions as a guarantee of quality, accountability and honesty in the production of knowledge. For social science research to fulfil its role as a trustworthy provider of premises in a knowledge-based society, we must therefore promote and uphold the principles of open research. This is an umbrella term covering a variety of practices that enhance the transparency and verifiability of research, and it is not limited to open access publishing. Others must be able to scrutinise our findings and understand how we arrived at our conclusions. Open research means that both processes and results are made accessible, and can include open publication of research findings and manuscripts, and the sharing of raw data and analytical methods.
A key value of open research practices is that they protect against what is often referred to as “questionable research practices”. By ensuring transparency at every stage of the research process, we reduce the scope for problematic practices such as “p-hacking” (manipulating data to achieve statistical significance), “HARKing” (formulating hypotheses after the results are known), or selective reporting of findings. Transparent practice ensures that the quality of research can be assessed and scrutinised by both peers and the public, and the sharing of data and processes allows better use of collective resources. This strengthens society’s trust in research.
Open research has perhaps most often been associated with quantitative research, but it is relevant across the entire disciplinary breadth of the faculty. In quantitative research, tools such as preregistration of hypotheses and analytical models, power calculations, and the sharing of reproducible code have become increasingly common. In practice, preregistration means that one describes and publicly registers the research plan, hypotheses and methods before data collection begins.
At the same time, we see that open research is just as important and increasingly widespread in qualitative research. Here, openness can mean clarifying the researcher’s perspectives and reflexivity, as well as ensuring transparency in the analytical frameworks and context so that the reader can follow the interpretative process step by step. In this context, openness is often more about transparency around interpretation than about replication. Although preregistration has traditionally been associated with experimental designs, it is entirely possible – and often valuable – to specify research questions and recruitment plans in advance in more exploratory and qualitative studies as well. There are many ways of working that can secure openness in research, and these are just a few examples.
Open research is not merely an academic ideal. Our owners and funders set clear requirements for our research. The government has set a goal that all publicly funded research should be openly accessible. This objective is underpinned by national strategies for data sharing, and both NFR and the European Research Council (ERC) require researchers who receive their support to develop data management plans and follow principles of open access. This may involve using digital platforms to make research designs and data available in line with the FAIR principles, thereby making data findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable. Funders such as the Dam Foundation go even further by requiring preregistration and full sharing of methodological materials.
In practice, these requirements and expectations mean that our faculty stands to gain from becoming even better at open research. Several research groups and individual researchers at the faculty are at the forefront in promoting and establishing procedures and methods for open research. The work done at the Department of Psychology (PSI) is a case in point. Through its own policy and the establishment of a dedicated working group, PSI has developed a web portal and toolkit for open research practices tailored to different disciplines and traditions. Their efforts to highlight and integrate these principles into both research and teaching deserve recognition.
At the same time as openness is, in many contexts, a prerequisite for trust, we must be aware that openness alone is not sufficient. Studies show that more information can, in some cases, lead to lower trust if it is presented without adequate context, or if the public has unrealistic expectations that researchers never make mistakes. For openness to foster trust, it must therefore be accompanied by good communication. Uncertainty is an integral part of our scientific methods, and as researchers we are well trained in assessing and quantifying the uncertainty in our results. In our communication, we must also dare to convey this scientific uncertainty and explain how knowledge is produced and what limitations our methods have.
Conveying uncertainty in a way that inspires trust requires considerable insight and a solid understanding of research methods. Our goal should therefore be to be as open as possible and as closed as necessary, weighing considerations of privacy and security against the desire for transparency. In doing so, we demonstrate that we take our societal mission seriously and help ensure that trust in social research remains strong, even in turbulent times.