PROPOSED RESEARCH

Proposal description
This research proposes the comparative analysis of the relationship between trust in the criminal justice
system and subjective wellbeing. These two separate constructs, one institutionally-related and one
subjective and individually-focused, will be linked through the operationalization of a mid-level sociological
concept - ontological security – which we hypothesise will have a mediating effect. The relationship between
these concepts will be empirically tested across four countries with different levels of trust in their criminal
justice system institutions, which will allow the identification of specific institutional effects and testing of the
generalizability of the proposed concepts.

Subjective wellbeing

Subjective wellbeing is constituted by two dimensions: affects and satisfaction with life (Diener & Suh 1997,
Pavot & Diener 1993). Satisfaction with life has been considered as a global assessment that individuals hold,
based on the quality of their life in its current conditions (Seligson et al 2003).

Subjective wellbeing is associated with several socially desirable outcomes, such as a lower prevalence of
illness (Lyubomirsky et al 2005, Pressman & Cohen 2005, Feller et al 2013, Howell et al 2007, Davidson et
al 2010), better mental health (Sin & Lyubomirsky2009, Werner-Seidler et al 2013, Korn et al 2013), higher
life expectancy (Diener & Chan 2011, Lacruz et al 2011), higher educational attainment (Lyubomirsky et al
2005, Ouweneel et al 2014, Nickerson et al 2013), increased creativity (Dolan & Metcalfe 2012), higher work
productivity (Oishi 2012, Diener et al 2002, Koivumaa-Honkanen et al 2004, Csikszentmihalyi 1990, Oswald
et al 2012), a tendency towards prosocial behavior (Aknin et al 2011, Priller & Schupp 2011) and predictive
capabilities towards depressive states and skills to deal with stressful life events (Seligson et al 2005).

Research on subjective wellbeing has also shown institutional-level effects, such as higher political
democratic participation by those with higher wellbeing (Flavin & Keane 2012). Research has also shown
institutional effects on wellbeing, with higher subjective wellbeing being found in countries with economic
freedom (Spruk & Kešeljević 2016) and in regions with direct democratic participation (Frey & Stutzer 2000,
Radcliff & Shufeld 2016). Bjørnskov et al (2010) report variations in effects of levels of national wealth,
showing that in low-income countries the effects of economic–judicial institutions on subjective wellbeing
dominate those of political institutions. Flavin & Keane (2012) report that the relationship between life
satisfaction and political participation is confined to “non-conflictual” forms of participation and exhibits no
relationship with the decision to engage in political protest.

Differences in subjective wellbeing associated with socio-economic inequality have been reported. Graham
& Felton (2006) report that inequality has negative effects on happiness in Latin America, the effect being a
function of relative deprivation rather than absolute poverty. However, Rözer & Kraaykamp (2013) note that
people living in more unequal countries report higher wellbeing than people from more equal countries,
although this relation does not apply to all people in the same country in the same way. On the one hand,
the positive effect of a nation’s income inequality is weaker when individuals express more social and
institutional trust and underscore egalitarian norms. On the other hand, the positive association between
national income inequality and subjective wellbeing is less strong for people from countries with high levels
of social and institutional trust. An opposite, but equally mediated conclusion was reached by Oishi et al
(2011) whose results show that in the case of the United States between 1972 and 2008, people were on
average happier in the years with less income inequality. This inverse relation between income inequality
and happiness was explained by perceived fairness and general trust. Oishi et al (2011) also report that
people trusted each other less and perceived others to be less fair in the years with more income inequality
than in those with less unequal. The negative association between income inequality and happiness held for
lower-income respondents, but not for higher-income respondents. Most important, the authors found that
the negative link between income inequality and the happiness of lower-income respondents was explained
not by lower household income, but by perceived unfairness and lack of trust.

Although there is a consistent literature reflecting the properties of subjective wellbeing for the development
of individuals and societies, ranging from longevity to higher political participation, little is known about the
relationship between SWB and explanatory factors related to institutional assessment.

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Linking individual and societal levels: ontological security

While subjective wellbeing research has focused mainly in its effects, as well as on institutional-level
explanations, a mixed approach linking both perspectives -a subjective approach to institutional assessment
and a societal approach to subjective wellbeing- has not yet been fully developed. Research with this aim
has no guarantee of success, considering that subjective wellbeing, as well as the individual experience, can
be related to several areas of interest and sources of the self (Yamamoto 2006). Nonetheless, it is worth
attempting, considering the expansion in policy goals that it can bring, allowing to focus not only in big
societal changes, but creating mid-term objectives towards peoples’ increased wellbeing. There are some
research areas where an initial approach seems feasible, including criminal justice.

In criminal justice system research, there is a consistent body of knowledge establishing the relationship
between institutional legitimacy, understood as seeing the police and courts as representatives of societal
values, and higher willingness to comply with the law. Most of this research uses a psychological perspective
based on social identity theories to guide its approach. The social identity perspective (Tajfel 1957, 1969,
1970, 1974, 1979, 1982) proposes that individuals construct their identity based on group membership,
associating value to the groups they belong to and distancing themselves from the groups they do not. This
approach, linking perception of authorities and social belonging, can provide a first link between these two
separate concepts. In an extension of this model, usually labelled as procedural justice theory, authorities
serve as social markers of individuals’ status in society, so that when people receive what they see as unfair
treatment from authorities, their sense of identity and sense of social belonging is harmed. In this sense,
from a social identity perspective, subjective wellbeing is related to the social validation that individuals
perceive from the groups they belong to, and the validation they see those groups have in society, with
authorities playing a vital role in this process.

Nonetheless, this general psychological approach lacks an intermediate level, bridging the institutional
(authority) and individual (attitudinal) levels. This analytical gap could have an answer in the classic
sociological approach of Weber (1932), if we focus on the meaning of institutional actions for the individual.
This bridging role between the individual and institutional levels is also found in Giddens’ theory of
structuration (1990) through the concept of ontological security (OS), which is focused on the capabilities
that individuals have to cope and understand the complexity and risks of modern societies. The concept
refers to the confidence that individuals have in the continuity of their self-identity and the constancy of their
surrounding social and material environments of action. In simple terms, having ontological security means
being confident that things are going to stay the way they are.

Ontological security is not only an evaluation of the institutional environment where individuals live but also
a condition for it. As Giddens notes “a sense of the reliability of persons and things, so central to the notion
of trust, is fundamental to feelings of ontological security; hence the two are psychologically closely related”
(1990: 92). The lack of ontological security involves the absence of basic trust, having as an outcome a
persistent existential anxiety. As Giddens notes “if basic trust is not developed or its inherent ambivalence
not contained, the outcome is persistent existential anxiety. In its most profound sense, the antithesis of
trust is thus a state of mind which could best be summed up as existential angst or dread” (1990: 100).

Ontological security is deeply rooted in the process of socialization and involves an emotional component. In
Giddens’ view, ontological security is grounded on trust in the continuity of things being the way they are,
enabling people to estimate reliably the outcomes of their actions. It is based on the idea of trust, defined
as “confidence in the reliability of a person or system, regarding a given set of outcomes or events, where
that confidence expresses a faith in the probity or love of another, or in the correctness of abstract principles
(technical knowledge)” (Giddens 1990: 33).

Poor institutional environments, where individuals perceive unfairness or do not perceive the social order as
either trustworthy or legitimate, would imply low ontological security, and therefore lower subjective
wellbeing. In simple terms, a rich understanding of SWB requires first an evaluation of people’s view of their
position in society -captured well by the concept of ontological security- and second, an assessment of their
satisfaction with life. Ontological security, can provide an explanatory bridge between perceptions of abstract
risks and the stability of the self. The stability of the self, in turn, should have a role in the evaluation of the
individual life, mediating the effects of institutional variables on subjective wellbeing.

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Until now, most of the literature on ontological security arises from the field of international relations and
security studies, showing that the concept can also be used as a macro concept involving the stability among
social groups (Rumelili 2013). Another application of this concept can be found in psychiatry, where
ontological security, developed through stable housing, is linked to better control of the self among people
with severe mental illness (Padgett 2007). Hinton et al (2009) report that trauma effects can be assessed
from a perspective of ontological security. The authors propose that focusing on several dimensions of
security, from physical (actual risk of physical assault) to spiritual (threat of attack by supernatural forces),
allows for a brief explanation of trauma, producing relevant information for interventions.

Harries (2008) notes that ontological security can also involve an underestimation of actual risks. Relying on
research based on homes located in possible flooding areas, the author concludes that individuals usually
underestimate the risks their homes are exposed to, thinking of their homes as inherently safe places. This
dual dimension of ontological security, is functional, on the one hand, in controlling anxiety and facilitating
the development of subjective wellbeing, while on the other hand leaving us exposed to the underestimation
of risks.

OS, as a concept, does not have until now any empirical measurement that takes account of its multi-faceted
nature. This research proposes advancing in the operationalization of it in order of achieving such an
instrument. There are related theories, such as the compensatory control theory (Kay et al 2009) which
posits that (a) individuals have a basic need to perceive the world as orderly and structured, and (b) personal
and external sources of control can satisfy this need because both serve the comforting belief that the world
operates in an orderly fashion (Landau et al 2015). This body of research appeals to the psychological need
of preservation of the self, which can have a dark side, given that the necessity of structure to maintain the
self (compensatory control) can lead to the justification of inequality or the acceptation of unfair hierarchies
(Van der Toorn et al 2015). In this study, compensatory control scales will be therefore part of the validation
of an ontological security measure but do not represent the whole concept, which is orientated not towards
control, but finally to self-actualization.

Having OS as an empirically defined concept will allow us to assess both its effects, as well as looking at its
determinants. As well as with SWB, OS can be affected by different dimensions of an individual’s experience.
Nonetheless, for this research, and considering that it is a well-established disciplinary area, the focus will
be on criminal justice system.

Ontological security and trust in the criminal justice system

The main justifications for mounting analysis of the links between OS and SWB using the lens of the criminal
justice system is twofold: theoretical and empirical.

Firstly, the theoretical justifications for doing so are as follows. The criminal justice system is one of the
primary abstract systems identified by Giddens (1990). It deals with the prevention and control of deviance
and the sanction and punishment of offenders. Therefore, it has the role of preventing physical or material
harm to individuals. Systems of criminal justice system can fail in two main ways: they can fail to prevent
harm, or they can treat citizens – whether victims or perpetrators – in an unfair way. In both cases,
individuals have ways to assess these risks of failure, through the assessment of the effectiveness of the
system, on the one hand, and its trustworthiness and legitimacy, on the other.

From a theoretical perspective, Singer (2006) proposes that one precondition for legal systems to secure
legitimacy is to be recognized as representing the values, or the “worldview” of large segments of the
population. This social requirement for public identification with the courts and the legal system can be seen,
as the root of social stability in the framework of a Weberian perspective on the modern State.

An important aspect of using OS and SWB as dependent variables for the assessment of the effects of the
criminal justice is related to expanding its informational basis. Currently, most of the analysis of the
relationship between public opinion and the criminal justice system has been premised on the idea that
efficiency of the criminal justice system is a key factor in shaping public opinion. By this view, more efficiency
(crime reduction and more efficient sentencing) would result in more positive opinions about the system,
and therefore more OS and SWB. This vision can be called the “confidence approach.” A different approach
from the relationship between public attitudes and justice is proposed by “procedural justice” theorists.
According to this perspective, criminal justice systems are more effective and efficient preventing and dealing
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with crime if people have trust in them, and trust is possible only if people see the criminal justice system
as fair (Tyler 1990, Tyler & Huo 2002, Sunshine & Tyler 2003a, Sunshine and Tyler 2003b Hough 2007,
Hough et al 2013). The idea that compliance with the law emanates from public identification with the values
represented by different actors and parts of the criminal justice system has been the subject of much
empirical work in recent years. This body of research suggests the existence of a strong relationship between
compliance with the law and beliefs in procedural fairness. It shows that people are more concerned with
fairness in their treatment by judicial actors than with the outcomes of their decisions (Tyler 1990, Tyler &
Huo 2002, Sunshine & Tyler 2003a, Sunshine & Tyler 2003b). In other words, “procedural justice” is valued
as much as, or more than, “outcome justice.” This approach to assessing attitudes towards the criminal
justice system is, ultimately, an attempt to assess the legitimacy of the State and its role in the use of force
to resolve social conflict.

As Hough et al (2010) note, the perception of procedural fairness is important not only for its possible
instrumental effects but more importantly because public trust in justice builds institutional legitimacy and
thus public compliance with the law and commitment to the rule of law. However, it would be possible to
have an even broader vision of what a criminal justice system represents, where the overarching goals is not
simply to build legitimacy and secure commitment to the rule of law, but to help improve subjective wellbeing
amongst citizens and reduce existential anxiety. From this perspective, the role of legal authorities could be
conceptualized not simply as securing public commitment to the rule of law, and public compliance with the
law, but also as being part of the institutional mechanisms by which citizens’ existential anxiety is reduced
and their subjective wellbeing is enhanced.

If this broadening of the objectives of the criminal justice system is regarded as a goal worth contemplating,
however, it is obviously important to establish the evidence base that demonstrates that a justice system
that is seen to be fair and effective – and thus legitimate – does indeed lead to improvements in the OS and
SWB of citizens. Following Jackson et al (2012, 2014) we propose to operationalize concepts of trust in justice
and of perceived institutional legitimacy. We envisage trust in justice as a multi-dimensional concept
comprising trust in procedural fairness, trust in distributive fairness and trust in competence; and we see
perceived legitimacy as comprising two main dimensions: beliefs in the ‘moral alignment’ between legal
authorities and citizens, and the consequent sense of moral obligation that citizens feel to obey legal
authorities.

The second justification for selecting the criminal justice system as the ‘testbed’ for institutional linages to
OS and SWB is empirical. The analysis of criminal justice allows for certain assumptions that make the
comparison of confidence and trust feasible. Regardless of social differences such as gender, age and
socioeconomic status, all individuals living in each country should receive or expect to receive a similar
treatment by authorities, given that all are citizens living under the same law. Therefore, the expectation of
fair treatment is an assumption against which individual expectations can be tested. This is not the case, for
instance, with income inequality, where education, gender and age have a direct association with rewards,
or with health services, where the provision can be segregated by possibilities to pay. In the case of the
criminal justice system, at least in the law, all people are subject to the same police and the same judiciary.

Researching the association between trust in the criminal justice system, ontological security and
subjective wellbeing: selecting countries for the proposed study.

Measuring the relationship between these three variables present several challenges. On the one hand, the
criminal justice system is a constant, at least in its institutional form, in each country. On the other hand,
trust in the criminal justice system is a subjective evaluation, but based on institutional arrangements. These
two conditions make it necessary to assess the strength and direction of these relationships and develop a
theory about the role that trust in the criminal justice system plays both with OS and SWB, to measure it in
different institutional arrangements. Using Latinobarómetro 2015 and LAPOP 2014 datasets, we selected 4
countries, showing differential levels of trust in the police and the courts. These four countries are Argentina,
Chile, Perú and Uruguay.

As can be observed in figure 1, there are clear differences in levels of trust in courts and the police in all four
countries, trust in the courts being lower in all of them. Nonetheless, it is possible to observe higher levels
of trust in the courts in Uruguay, Argentina and lower levels in Chile and Perú. In the case of trust in the
police the case is different, being Chile the country with highest levels of trust, followed by Uruguay,
Argentina and Perú, respectively.
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 Figure 1
People declaring high trust in the police and courts (Values 6-7 out of 7)
Selected countries (in %)

Source: LAPOP 2014

This scenario gives step to two different settings for analysis. On the one hand, it is possible to assess the
trust in the police, where Chile and Uruguay have higher levels and then Argentina and Perú. On the other
hand, looking at trust in the courts, we would see a different arrangement, with Uruguay and Argentina
being the most trusted, with Chile and Perú in the lower end.

The Latinobarómetro series on trust in the police confirms this picture, in relation to the police. Chile and
Uruguay have held long time higher levels of trust than Argentina and Perú, with Argentina having slightly
higher levels in recent years.

Figure 2
People who declares “a lot of trust” in the police (in %)
Selected countries

Source: Latinobarómetro series 1995-2015

Assessing these four countries will allow to control for the institutional variability of Chile, which shows a
great difference between the evaluation of the police and courts. Uruguay, Argentina and Perú on the
contrary, in the 2014 measure look more stable in terms of their assessment of courts and police. These
differential levels of trust across countries, allow testing different models looking for associations between
the main constructs under study.

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Research Questions
Summarizing our account of the state of the art, there is evidence for the following:
• Subjective wellbeing is associated with desirable outcomes (longer life, more participation, etc.)
• Subjective wellbeing has been mainly analysed as an individual-level variable.
• Subjective wellbeing is affected by institutional arrangements.
• Ontological security is a social characteristic associated with the perceived continuity of the self and
the world.
• Under ontological security people can act with trust and develop their selves, theoretically, achieving
more subjective wellbeing.
• Ontological security is based on beliefs about abstract systems (Giddens).
• The criminal justice system is one of these abstract systems, providing both a set of norms and an
enforcement structure (police and courts).
• Criminal justice systems can coerce citizens into complying with the law, but they can also secure
public commitment to compliance, by building their legitimacy.
Public trust in the criminal justice system’s fairness and competence will build public perceptions of
the system’s legitimacy.
• A case can be made for extending the goals of the criminal justice system, to enhance ontological
security and subjective wellbeing, additional to securing crime control and commitment to the rule of
law.

The research questions that guide this proposal are

• What are the relationships between trust and legitimacy of the criminal justice system, ontological
security and subjective wellbeing?
• Is these relationships mediated by ontological security?
• Is these relationships consistent across countries?

Hypotheses
According to the literature:
• There is a direct association between ontological security and subjective well-being
• There is both a direct and a mediated association between legitimacy of the criminal justice system
and subjective well-being
• There are both direct and mediated associations between trust in the criminal justice system and
ontological security and subjective well-being
• The size of these effects will vary across countries, but the general structure of the model will be still
valid in all of them.

The model structure should be like this:

Trust
-Fairness
-Efficacy Ontological Security Subjective Well-being
-Self-Efficacy -Satisfaction with Life
-Compensatory control -Personal Well-being
-Grit -Social Well-being
Legitimacy -Perceived control
-Entitlement
to command
-Duty to obey

Goals
This research aims to:
• Develop a validated measure of Ontological Security.
• Measure the levels of trust in the criminal justice system, ontological security, and subjective
wellbeing in four Latin American countries.
• Identify the associations between legitimacy and trust in the criminal justice system, ontological
security and subjective wellbeing.
• Assess the predicting role of ontological security on subjective wellbeing, both directly and as a
mediator.
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 • Assess the direct and mediated predicting role of trust in the criminal justice system on ontological
security and subjective wellbeing
• Assess the direct and mediated predicting role of legitimacy of the criminal justice system on
ontological security and subjective wellbeing
• Assess if these associations work similarly in the four investigated countries.

Methodology
We will use a largely quantitative strategy, supported by qualitative work. We propose in 2 research stages.
The first stage involves the development and validation of a scale on ontological security and the second
involves primary data collection in 4 countries. Based on previous comparative research carried out by the
researchers (OPDOP, 2015), the following procedure is proposed:

1. Instruments
First stage: development of an Ontological Security scale
The construction will have four steps:
• Theoretical design: operationalization of ontological security
o Development of the scale based on Giddens (1990)
• Qualitative approach: Focus group testing of the concept and proposed dimensions -items
• Scale design and identification of psychometric properties (pretest)
• Construct validation with:
o Perceived control scale (Pallant 2000): direct partial association
o Compensatory control scale (Kay et al. 2009): direct partial association
o Grit scale (Duckwort et al 2007): direct partial association
o Self-Efficacy (Cid et al 2010): direct partial association

Theoretically, we expect a construct association with these scales as they represent measures of individual
capacities to control the environment.

Second stage: full questionnaire

Dimensions
• Trust in the criminal justice system
o European Social Survey trust scales (Hough, Jackson & Bradford 2013).
• Legitimacy of the criminal justice system
o European Social Survey legitimacy scales (Hough, Jackson & Bradford 2013).
• Ontological Security
o Developed in stage 1
• Wellbeing, measured through validated scales:
o Personal Well Being index (Oyanedel et al. 2015)
o Satisfaction with life Scale (Diener et al. 1985)
o Pemberton Happiness Index (Hervás & Vazquez 2013)

Theoretically, we expect an association between these concepts, finding a mediational effect of ontological
security.

2. Universe and Sample

Stage one:
Stage one has three steps
• The first is the implementation of 3 focus groups (people from medium-low socioeconomic levels) in
order to discuss the concept of ontological security and test the dimensions proposed for its
operationalization.
• The second is a Pretest based on a convenience sample (100 university students, aged 18+). This
pretest will serve to identify problems in the comprehension of the scale as well as identifying its
primary psychometric properties. This will serve to reduce the general scale and improve the general
readability of it.
• The third involves testing the psychometric properties of the scale in general population. 400
household-based interviews in Santiago de Chile with population aged 18+ will be carried out.
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 Probabilistic Sample based on a three-step sampling model-housing block, household, person. Final
step with Kish table. Sampling framework: National Institute of Statistics’ sampling framework.

Stage two:
• 1200 household-based interviews in each national capital with population aged 18+. Probabilistic
Sample based on a three-step sampling model-housing block, household, person. Final step with Kish
table. Sampling framework: Sampling framework provided by National Partners, who have worked
previously with the research team in international data collection. In the case of Chile, we will make use
of the National Institute of Statistics’ sampling framework, which is part of the team research
infrastructure.

3. Data collection and management

• Data will be collected by the research team in agreement with a local counterpart. Training will be
implemented by the research team in each country, as well as the supervision of data collection.
• Data collection will involve the signing of an informed consent agreement according to U. Andres Bello
ethics committee guidelines. Data will be stored in an encrypted web repository and questionnaires will
be digitalised and subsequently destroyed in each country.

4. Statistical techniques to Use

• Stage one: to establish the scale validity both Exploratory and Confirmatory Factor Analysis will be
used. Concurrent validity will be tested through correlations and SEM.
• Stage two: To assess direct and mediational effects, Structural Equation Modelling will be used, both at
country level and as multi-group model.

Expected products
This research presents a theoretical model bridging macro (trust in the criminal justice system) and micro
(subjective wellbeing) phenomena. The proposed bridging concept, ontological security, has been part of the
sociological literature for more than twenty years without a direct approach focused on its measurement,
despite the relevance it has in theoretical terms, being a measurement of the social link between individuals
and society.

Three main applications of such a measurement could be:

• The development of a valid measure of ontological security could represent a significant step forward for
the empirical analysis of processes of social exclusion, from acculturation to social justification.
• It could be a significant contribution to the study of social anxiety related to crime, allowing estimating
the contribution that trust in criminal justice system and phenomena such as fear of crime, have for OS.
• The study of the relationship between OS and mental health, empirically testing Giddens’ hypothesis
regarding existential anxiety.

This research will also contribute to the analysis of the role that trust in the criminal justice system and its
perceived fairness has for subjective wellbeing. Such a link could give a new boost to the literature about
law-related attitudes. In very simple terms, if believing in the fairness of law enforcement made people more
compliant and more willing to collaborate with criminal justice institutions, as current literature indicates,
decent treatment of citizens by the police is at the final analysis very end a more efficient way of policing
than coercive approaches. Nonetheless, when we put SWB at the end of this process, the objective of fair
treatment by the police and courts stops being the efficiency of law enforcement agencies, taking the form
of adding societal value through the promotion of ontological security and individuals’ subjective wellbeing.

In criminological research, there has been a long trend focusing on narrowing the ways police work is
measured and analyzed, reducing it to detentions and crime reports. The procedural justice theory tries to
expand this narrow “police facts” model to analyze the role that interactions between people and authorities
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have for the individuals’ behavior. Linking procedural justice with subjective wellbeing research pushes
forward these boundaries, putting societal goals at the core of police work.

Another strand of this research could be the implementation of a large scale comparative program focusing
on the topic of ontological security and wellbeing, expanding the reach to other abstracts systems, such as
protection against natural disasters, environmental protection, higher education, and disease control.

In more practical terms, from this research, we expect to produce:

• At least three WoS papers
• Four International seminars
• Six theses developed in the framework of the project. We will train new researchers through the
funded incorporation of graduate and undergraduate students at their thesis stage.

Work Plan
Year 1
Literature review Year 3
Visit of Prof. Mike Hough - Focus: Trust in the Data analysis
Criminal Justice System Visit of Prof. Darío Páez -Focus: Wellbeing and
International seminar Ontological security
Operationalization of Ontological Security International seminar
Development of an Ontological Security Scale International visit
International visit Paper presentation in international congress
Questionnaire design and piloting Second article submission
Training of interviewers Thesis supervision
Start of survey fieldwork
Thesis supervision Year 4
Data analysis
Year 2 Visit of Prof. Jeff Ross. Focus: Attitudes towards
End of fieldwork the Criminal Justice System
Data analysis International seminar
International visit International visit
Visit Argentina, Perú and Uruguay. Paper presentation in international congress
Paper presentation in international congress Third article submission
First article submission Thesis supervision
Thesis supervision

Work in progress
The researchers have developed work in the areas of trust in the criminal justice system (Oyanedel) and
wellbeing (Oyanedel, Torres & Sato). The principal investigator, Juan Carlos Oyanedel, has several
publications about trust in the criminal justice system (Oyanedel, 2016), attitudes towards crime (Mendiburo
el al 2017) and wellbeing (Oyanedel et al 2016, Alfaro et al 2015, Vera-Villaroel et al 2015).

Oyanedel has recently finished the research ‘Estimating the effects of Criminal Procedure Reforms in
confidence and trust in the Criminal Justice System in Latin America (1995-2013)’ (FONDECYT Postdoctoral
F3140025), where he analyzed the effects that judicial reforms had for trust in the police and the courts
using the Latinobarómetro series. This research has led him to focus on the role that trust in the criminal
justice system plays for the promotion subjective wellbeing, directing his efforts to understand ontological
security as a mediator of this relationship.

The researchers have experience working together, they have jointly published five articles and a book in
the last three years (López et al 2017, Oyanedel et al 2015, Vargas et al 2015a, Vargas et al 2015b, Vera-
Villarroel et al 2015, Oyanedel et al. 2014). During 2014 the team worked together in the implementation of
the Drug Policy and Public Opinion Observatory (DPO), a regional barometer focused on the analysis of public
opinion towards drug policy in Latin America. Currently, it is the only comparative research project in the
area in Latin America. In 2014, nine countries were included (Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica,

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El Salvador, Mexico, Peru, and Uruguay). The total sample was 8952 cases. The sample is urban and
concentrated in the countries’ capital cities. It surveys people aged 18+. The methodological features of this
survey are the basis for this proposal. From this survey, one paper has been published (Mendiburo et al
2017) and three papers are under evaluation in journals such as The British Journal of Criminology. The local
points of Argentina, Perú, and Uruguay, participated in the mentioned research.

Available Resources

International partnerships
The Project will benefit from an international network of scholars, who will bring expertise in the areas of
attitudes towards the criminal justice system, wellbeing and local knowledge from their respective countries.

• Prof. Mike Hough from Birkbeck College, University of London (h-index:53). Professor Hough is a leading
scholar in the measurement of trust in the Criminal Justice System. He participated in the team that
included the scales of trust in law in the European Social Survey. His contribution will be on the
measurement of trust and legitimacy of criminal justice systems.
• Prof. Jeff Ross from the University of Baltimore (h-index:24). Professor Ross is a specialist on crime
measurement. He has written extensively on state and corporate crime, prison studies and street culture.
His contribution will be in the area of abstract systems and ontological security measurement.
• Prof. Darío Páez from the University of the Basque Country (h-index:49). Professor Páez is a specialist in
quantitative social psychology and a leading scholar in the analysis of subjective wellbeing and socio-
emotional processes. His contribution will be on the measurement of wellbeing and ontological security.

We also have a network of Latin American researchers who will contribute locally for the data collection
process. All of them have collaborated previously in the implementation of surveys in their own countries
based on international research projects.

• Prof. Graciela Delfino, from the Catholic University of Argentina, is the contact in Buenos Aires. Social
Psychologist, she is a specialist in political psychology and psychometrics.
• Prof. Rafael Miranda from the Catholic University of Peru will be the contact in Lima. Political Scientist, is
a specialist in policy evaluation and wellbeing.
• Prof. Pablo Galain from the Max Planck Institute of International Foreign and Criminal Law and currently
at Universidad de la Republica in Uruguay will be the contact point in Montevideo. A criminologist, is a
specialist in victimology, judicial reforms, and socio-legal research.

Institutional resources
Universidad Andrés Bello, through its Faculty of Education, will provide the principal investigator, co-
investigator and support staff:
• An office equipped for the work of the principal investigator and support personnel.
• Access to statistical software (SPSS, Mplus).
• Access to library facilities and databases necessary for the implementation of the project.
• Release from teaching activities and other academic obligations to comply with FONDECYT time
commitments (travels and weekly research hours).
• Administrative support for the management of the Project

2018 FONDECYT Regular Competition