Correlation between Civic Knowledge and Trust in Institutions: What Does ICCS 2022 Say about Serbia?

The International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS) is the international survey concerning primary school students’ understanding of main civic and citizenship concepts, but it also explores their attitudes, values and behaviors toward participation in schools, local community and at national and global levels. Among other attitudes, the study measures trust in civic institutions. Serbia took part in this survey for the first time in 2022. Secondary analysis of data from previous ICCS waves reveals a significant correlation between civic and citizenship knowledge and trust in civic institutions. Furthermore, it has been observed that this correlation varies across countries in terms of its direction. The correlation depends on the social context and it is negative in countries with higher perceived corruption and low scores on indices of government efficiency. Considering that Serbia is characterized as a low-trust society in terms of institutional and interpersonal trust, we aimed to test whether civic and citizenship knowledge is correlated with trust in institutions and if so, to explore which group of countries this correlation falls into. In order to do so we analyzed data from ICCS 2022 for all 25 participating countries. This study examines 14-15 years old primary school students. Results reveal a statistically significant weak correlation. Furthermore, two groups of countries were identified: one with a negative correlation and the other with a positive correlation. The strongest negative correlations were observed in Colombia and Brazil, while the strongest positive correlation is noticed in the Netherlands and Norway. Serbia is among European countries with the strongest negative correlation. It is worth noticing that, based on the same dataset, we found that countries with a negative correlation tend to have lower social capital index and lower Freedom House score of freedom compared to countries with a positive correlation. Based on the analysis, we conclude that correlation between civic and citizenship knowledge and trust in institutions reflects the level of stability and democracy in society, suggesting that Serbia is still far away from fully realizing democratic ideals.