Junior Research Group Reputation and Trust Building

The junior research group was founded in 2022 to study the construction of reputation and trust in the context of regulatory science.

Regulatory scientific organisations have been confronted with a multitude of contradictory demands. For policy-advising risk assessment organisations, such as the BfRshort forGerman Federal Institute for Risk Assessment, strengthening society's trust in them is a primary concern and an essential goal of their risk communication. The junior research group takes a multidimensional approach to illuminate the construction of trust in a global setting.

The group is composed of researchers from organizational and political sciences as well as sociology that draw upon a variety of methods (e.g. interviews, focus groups, online and telephone surveys, content and document analyses).

The research results of the junior research group complements wider BfRshort forGerman Federal Institute for Risk Assessment research projects and helps to identify possible reform paths for strengthening trust in an international context. Results are made available to the public through publications, presentations and workshops with relevant stakeholders.