Trust in Group Decisions: a scoping review

Abstract

Background Trust is a critical component of competency committees given their high-stakes decisions. Research from outside of medicine on group trust has not focused on trust in group decisions, and “group trust” has not been clearly defined. The purpose was twofold: to examine the definition of trust in the context of group decisions and to explore what factors may influence trust from the perspective of those who rely on competency committees through a proposed group trust model. Methods The authors conducted a literature search of four online databases, seeking articles published on trust in group settings. Reviewers extracted, coded, and analyzed key data including definitions of trust and factors pertaining to group trust. Results The authors selected 42 articles for full text review. Although reviewers found multiple general definitions of trust, they were unable to find a clear definition of group trust and propose the following: a group-directed willingness to accept vulnerability to actions of the members based on the expectation that members will perform a particular action important to the group, encompassing social exchange, collective perceptions, and interpersonal trust. Additionally, the authors propose a model encompassing individual level factors (trustor and trustee), interpersonal interactions, group level factors (structure and processes), and environmental factors. Conclusions Higher degrees of trust at the individual and group levels have been associated with attitudinal and performance outcomes, such as quality of group decisions. Developing a deeper understanding of trust in competency committees may help these committees implement more effective and meaningful processes to make collective decisions. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1186/s12909-019-1726-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Scoping reviews in medical education: A scoping review

“…We included 101 studies (See Appendix for a diagram of the inclusion process) 18‐118 . On average 10.1 scoping reviews (SD = 13.1, median = 4, range 0‐42) were published annually (See Appendix ) with the most published in 2019 (n = 42; 41.6%).…”

“…The first scoping review in our sample was published in 2011. Scoping reviews were featured in 13 of the 14 journals with Academic Medicine (n = 28, 27.7%), 18,24,33,35‐38,44,48,49,52,55,58,61,62,68,72,73,76,90,92,94,97,100,104,112,115,116 Medical Education (n = 18, 17.8%) 20,22,27,32,40,46,56,60,63,65‐67,77,103,108‐111 and BMC Medical Education (n = 16, 15.8%) 19,26,29,39,45,50,51,58,69,70,84,85,87,96,105,113 publishing the most. Clinical Teacher did not publish any scoping reviews during this time period.…”

“…While not all scoping reviews had available citation data, those that did (n = 89) were cited, on average, 6.4 times (SD = 11.7, median = 2, range 0‐61) 19‐23,25‐32.34‐37,39,40,44‐46,48‐58,60‐71,73‐81,83‐90,92‐118 . Eighteen articles (17.8%) had not been cited 19‐23,25,26,28‐31,37,39,45,53,54,78,88 ; of those, 10 (55.6%) 19‐23,25,26,28,37,54 were published after 2019. (See the Appendix for the 10 most cited scoping reviews).…”

Group Trust in the Setting of Competency Committee Decisions: A Qualitative Observational Study

“…For decision making groups to reach a consensus, communication and interactions between and among people, objects (those items that extend human capabilities in a learning or task-oriented setting, such as learning management systems), and the environment are believed to be essential. We therefore used situated cognition as the underlying theoretical framework for our model (Sapp et al, 2019). Situated cognition contends that thinking is viewed as situated (or located) within the larger social and physical context of the environment (Durning and Artino, 2011).…”

“…In a recent scoping review, we defined group trust (which encompasses both trust within a group as an aggregate or combination of individual trust and trust in the context of group decisions) as a group-directed willingness to accept vulnerability to actions of the members based on the expectation that members will perform a particular action important to the group, encompassing social exchange, collective perceptions, and interpersonal trust. We also examined literature outside of health professions education to determine what factors may influence trust from the perspective of those who rely on decision making groups and proposed a model (Figure 1) to illustrate the relationship between trust at the individual and group levels (Sapp et al, 2019). In this model, we delineate individual level factors, group level factors (i.e.…”