Replicability or revision? Further evidence on the psychometric quality of the German version of the epistemic trust, mistrust and credulity questionnaire
Nicola-Hans Schwarzer, Noëlle Behringer, Paula Dees, Stephan Gingelmaier, Melanie Henter, Holger Kirsch, Tillmann Kreuzer, Robert Langnickel, Pierre-Carl Link, Sascha Müller, Agnes Turner, Tobias Nolte · 2026
Read Replicability or revision? Further evidence on the psychometric quality of the German version of the epistemic trust, mistrust and credulity questionnaire by Nicola-Hans Schwarzer, Noëlle Behringer, Paula Dees, Stephan Gingelmaier, Melanie Henter, Holger Kirsch, Tillmann Kreuzer, Robert Langnickel, Pierre-Carl Link, Sascha Müller, Agnes Turner, Tobias Nolte (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/pmc-13202747.txt.
Description
A questionnaire about how people trust information gets a skeptical audit in a 2026 psychometric study authored by Nicola-Hans Schwarzer. The research article evaluates the German version of the Epistemic Trust, Mistrust, and Credulity Questionnaire in 567 university students, comparing its original structure with published shortened models.
Confirmatory factor analyses found that neither the fifteen-item nor the twelve-item version fit the data acceptably. Reliability and variance measures fell below accepted thresholds for all three subscales in every model tested. Links with related traits behaved as theory expects for mistrust and credulity but diverged for trust, leading the authors to recommend thorough item revision before wider use.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Nicola-Hans Schwarzer, Noëlle Behringer, Paula Dees, Stephan Gingelmaier, Melanie Henter, Holger Kirsch, Tillmann Kreuzer, Robert Langnickel, Pierre-Carl Link, Sascha Müller, Agnes Turner, Tobias Nolte |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 54 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |