Reliability and validity of the Chinese version of McAllister's trust scale

Abstract

While most trust scales have their original versions in English, few attempts have been made to study the reliability and validity of their translated versions. Among the trust scales available in the literature, McAllister's cognition- and affect-based trust scale is a self-rating scale, developed to test the trust relationship between managers and professionals. It is translated into Chinese with translation/ back-translation technique and used in a survey among architects in Mainland China to measure interpersonal trust in a design team. Reliability analysis shows that Cronbach alphas for cognition-based and affect-based trust are found to be high (0.803 and 0.841 respectively). First-order and second-order confirmatory factor analysis with Amos 6.0 are conducted to test the validity of the two-dimensional structure. Structural equation modelling method is used to test the nomological validity of the translated trust scale with respect to architects' willingness to share knowledge in a design team. Findings suggest that the two-dimensional structure of the McAllister's trust scale can be applied to Chinese architects. Moreover, the cognition- and affect-based trust scale could be used in a more general context. The positive relationship between the two-dimensional trust and architects' willingness to share knowledge is also confirmed, which substantiates the nomological validity of the translated trust scale.