Almost one in four people in the State do not believe statistics provided by Government institutions are trustworthy, according to a study by the Central Statistics Office (CSO).
Some 40 per cent of respondents said they found figures provided by State institutions were often or always difficult to understand.
Just under 75 per cent of respondents said they felt the statistics provided by State institutions were trustworthy.
The CSO on Friday published the results of a survey on news sources and views on national statistics, which was taken from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Trust Survey 2023. More than 1,900 respondents in the Republic took part in the survey.
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It states that nearly 80 per cent of respondents reported getting news and current affairs information from television or radio. More than 77 per cent received their news from newspapers or magazine in print and online. Some 70 per cent got this information from social media.
Nine in 10 respondents said the organisation that published the story, or the journalist who reported on it, was one of the top three factors that mattered most when deciding if the news was trustworthy. The sources cited in a story was deemed an important issue by more than 75 per cent.
Only 2.4 per cent of respondents reported that the number of shares, comments or likes a news report had received on social media was a key factor in deciding if it was trustworthy.
Nearly 40 per cent of respondents got 10 per cent or less of their political and current affairs information from social media, while 4.5 per cent got more than 80 per cent.
The Republic was one of the 30 countries that participated in the survey, which monitors people’s self-reported interpersonal trust and trust in different institutions and governments.
The survey was conducted for the second time in 2023, with the first carried out in 2021 in 22 countries.
Back then, the survey found that more than 75 per cent of respondents here trusted the police, while some 51 per cent trusted the national government and 45 per cent trusted their local government.
