Comprehensive drug policies increase trust in local government: an analysis of authorities’ and residents’ perspectives in rural US Appalachian and Midwestern counties

Table 4 Items used to measure the dependent and mediating variables in Study 2

Variables items	Cronbach’s α or Spearman-Brown ρ
Trust (M = 3.10, SD = 1.15)	α = .93
Residents in the community trust the local government to do its best to take care of people in the community (1 = strongly disagree; 5 = strongly agree)
Residents in the community trust the local government to address people’s healthcare needs (1 = strongly disagree; 5 = strongly agree)
Please estimate the level of trust in local government by people in the community where you live (1 = no trust at all; 2 = very little trust; 3 = they are neutral; 4 = some trust; 5 = a great deal of trust)
Perception of governmental efforts^a (M = 3.38, SD = 1.21) (1 = very unlikely; 5 = very likely)
The local government makes efforts to reduce drug use problems, regardless of methods
Feeling of optimism (M = 3.79, SD = 1.05) (1 = strongly disagree; 5 = strongly agree)	ρ = .87
I would feel confident that the current conditions of my county can improve
I would feel hopeful that things can improve in my county

A composite was created if the construct’s Cronbach’s alpha or Spearman-Brown ρ surpassed conventional level of 0.7. mean and SD are reported next to the name of the construct
^aThe pre-registered scale conceptualized belief about other methods (in the Supplementary Table S2) and perception of governmental efforts as one single construct. However, the 4-item reliability was low (α = 0.49) and separating the efforts item improved the reliability of the rest of the scale to above 0.7. Therefore, we decided to keep governmental effort as a separate construct

ISSN: 1477-7517