Slovak Academy of Sciences is the most credible institution in Slovakia in 2023
The result of the credibility of institutions from the end of May 2023 once again confirmed the position of the Slovak Academy of Sciences (SAS) as the most credible among the fourteen compared institutions in Slovakia. According to a survey conducted by the FOCUS agency, 73.3% of respondents completely or rather trust the Slovak Academy of Sciences. SAS´ credibility is consistently high across Slovak society – it is high among all age categories, and it is independent of respondents' education or income.
The survey was conducted from May 24 – 31, 2023, on a sample of 1,012 respondents.
"It is extremely gratifying that the Slovak Academy of Sciences has been regularly ranked at the top of the credibility survey since 2016. It means a lot that the society appreciates the SAS outputs that are presented to the public. The Academy could also use this potential in the future, for example to fight hoaxes and unsubstantiated claims. Thus, the Slovak society could have a fixed point when deciding what is good and bad or reasonable and unreasonable. And I wish that this fixed point would be the Slovak Academy of Sciences,” prof. Pavol Šajgalik, President of the SAS, sums up the results.
Slovak universities can enjoy a similar favourable result. 73.1% of respondents completely or rather trust universities. On the contrary, the National Council of the Slovak Republic (20.6% of respondents completely or rather trust it), the judicial and legal system (33.0% of respondents completely or rather trust it) and large companies and corporations (34.2% of respondents completely or rather trust them) are the least credible.
"According to the measurement of credibility in 2023, SAS is the most credible among the fourteen compared institutions. An important context is that SAS´ credibility remained similarly high as in 2021, while trust in most of the compared institutions declined more or less significantly between 2021 and 2023. It is pleasing that, at a time of general decline in trust in Slovak institutions, Slovak universities, together with the Slovak Academy of Sciences, are also ranked in the first places of credibility,” Miloslav Bahna, the Director of the Institute for Sociology SAS comments on the results of the survey.
Overall, from the SAS´ point of view, the tendency of the decrease in the share of respondents who did not answer the question of trust in SAS is also pleasing. Since the survey conducted in 2016, this share has decreased from 8.9% to 5.7% of respondents. The share of respondents who trust SAS is up to 77.8% among the respondents who answered the question in the survey about trust in SAS.