Measuring Perceptions of Trustworthiness: A Research Project

The digital curation and preservation community has long acknowledged that trustworthiness is a critical component of successful digital repositories. However, there is no known method to determine if or under what circumstances an end-user perceives a repository as trustworthy. While the research literature describes definitions, criteria, and certification processes that allow repository managers to assert trustworthiness under certain conditions, it does not adequately define, measure, or specify trustworthiness from the perspective of the end-user. This paper highlights traditional notions of trustworthiness in the context of the literature on digital repositories and explores trustworthiness from the end-user’s perspective. The paper also presents an ongoing research project to: (1) investigate designated communities’ perspectives on trustworthiness using focus groups, and (2) explore building, testing, and assessing an index to measure trustworthiness.