The public’s levels of trust in US government agencies can often be very different to their trust in government in general

With the recent of exposure of intelligence gathering by government agencies, public trust in government has suffered yet another blow. But are the levels of public trust in government reflected by trust in specific agencies? Using the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) as a case study, Scott E. Robinson, Xinsheng Liu, James W. Stoutenborough, and Arnold Vedlitz find that members of the public make judgments about the trustworthiness of individual agencies that can differ from their feelings of trust in government. They also find that those that pay closer attention to issues of homeland security trust the DHS to a greater extent.